Death knell for landlines - RANT

[OKnewguy]

If you like the idea of Ooma, google voice can do the same thing and is free (at least for most normal phone features and US calls) Most people only think of GV being used on a computer or smart phone, but with a some voip adapters you can setup GV. I use Obihai and I think they are about $50. Once you purchase your interface box, you set it up to use GV. From then on you have no recurring bills minus things like international calling and and conference calls. You get caller id (only the number and not the name) call waiting and long distance. One thing this does not have is 911 service. There are ways to setup 911 for about $2 a month. This also give you caller id with names. I have had mine setup now for 2-3 years and everything has been great. It is nice to have my 20 year home number still chugging along and sometimes when calling things like help lines and such it is really nice to have a old school phone when you are going to be on hold awhile.
Dave

 

[OKnewguy]

If you like the idea of Ooma, google voice can do the same thing and is free (at least for most normal phone features and US calls) Most people only think of GV being used on a computer or smart phone, but with a some voip adapters you can setup GV. I use Obihai and I think they are about $50. Once you purchase your interface box, you set it up to use GV. From then on you have no recurring bills minus things like international calling and and conference calls. You get caller id (only the number and not the name) call waiting and long distance. One thing this does not have is 911 service. There are ways to setup 911 for about $2 a month. This also give you caller id with names. I have had mine setup now for 2-3 years and everything has been great. It is nice to have my 20 year home number still chugging along and sometimes when calling things like help lines and such it is really nice to have a old school phone when you are going to be on hold awhile.
Dave

 

[Ford850]

I followed this thread earlier, so I thought I'd come back and add my latest dealing with my landline provider, Frontier, last week.
My cable internet service and my landline telephone both went out around the same time. I called Time Warner first, regarding the internet, and they had an informative message saying they know of the outage and service would be renewed within 3 hours. It came back on in less than an hour. But a few hours later, still no landline. So I called Frontier. I'll make a long story short... After 2 calls and nearly an hour talking to them (and auto prompts), they finally got a ticket entered. Someone would work on renewing my service in 6 days, between the hours of 8:00 a.m. and 9:00 p.m., and they "may or may not charge me" for the repair. So no phone for nearly a week, and a 13 hour window for an appointment. But the good news is they are "sorry for the inconvenience", so I have that going for me. I need to review the details of this thread for alternative solutions to a landline.

 

[kcflhrc]

I followed this thread earlier, so I thought I'd come back and add my latest dealing with my landline provider, Frontier, last week.
My cable internet service and my landline telephone both went out around the same time. I called Time Warner first, regarding the internet, and they had an informative message saying they know of the outage and service would be renewed within 3 hours. It came back on in less than an hour. But a few hours later, still no landline. So I called Frontier. I'll make a long story short... After 2 calls and nearly an hour talking to them (and auto prompts), they finally got a ticket entered. Someone would work on renewing my service in 6 days, between the hours of 8:00 a.m. and 9:00 p.m., and they "may or may not charge me" for the repair. So no phone for nearly a week, and a 13 hour window for an appointment. But the good news is they are "sorry for the inconvenience", so I have that going for me. I need to review the details of this thread for alternative solutions to a landline.

That is a ridiculous commitment time from Frontier. Our tickets are worked within 24 hours. I would call the PUC and make a formal complaint.

 

[ultrarunner]

There was a time when American Telephone service was the best in the world... Bar None.

The idea was to design a system that was as reliable as humanly possible and maintain staffing to promptly handle anything that might come up.

The downward spiral started with the breakup... that replaced a single national entity with several and it was never the same after that.

I remember storm damage or vandalism compromised individual service... the phone company would have people night, weekends, holidays... only one goal... make the repair.

The idea was to lower costs for business... as business was subsidizing residential... and costs did drop.

It's interesting today... the monthly cost for service is almost 50% regulatory fees, city and state charges/taxes and special programs... $34 at the cabin and this is without making a single call on the old dial wall phone...

 

[doctinker]

Got rid of landline years ago. I miss the old style phones though. Can't hear squat on the cell phones. The clarity on the old phones was superb.

 

[bigdeano]

My brother's Frontier landline quit working a couple weeks ago. Took over a week before they sent a guy out. Turns out another guy had been working on the lines down the road and disconnected my brother's because he thought it wasn't being used. Frontier must be cutting back on employees to save money.

 

[ultrarunner]

The changes have resulted in a lot of institutional knowledge being lost...

Working for the phone company was a career job.... you did it right the first time because you did not want to have to come back a second.

A lot of the vendors I work with are short timers... they may have a contract or not... more than a couple years on the job seems very uncommon.

The husband of my co-worker just passed the 50 year mark with PGE... he started right out of high school... did his military service and came back to his job...

He is a lineman... and was around when most of the infrastructure was going in.

His boss asks him every year if he has any plans to retire... he says no... unless the company gives him a reason... in other words he still loves his job and now more than ever... his boss asks because he knows it will be harder without him.

He is the unofficial go to guy... and is very much appreciated in this role all the way up to the regional managers... when the day comes and he does leave a vast amount of knowledge will be lost...

 

[California]

The downward spiral started with the breakup... that replaced a single national entity with several and it was never the same after that.

ATT went nuts after the breakup. I accepted their offer for an ATT credit card to make calls from a hotel etc. Soon they revised the terms to $3.50/month fee if it wasn't used, so I started using it for general shopping. Next time I skipped using it in a month they billed $15 'non-use fee' including a threat to reduce my credit rating. I cancelled the card.

Also Southwest Bell started buying up the other regional Bells and imposing cost cutting. My local PacBell was now SWBell of San Antonio. In the early days of DSL I recall talking to a help desk tech who was outraged that with the changeover his internet access was dumbed down to a green-screen IBM terminal showing scripts for him to reply to the customer's question.

Then SWBell of San Antonio bought ATT, but only for the name. They released everyone from ATT and gave their own local staff the ATT job titles. 100 years of accumulated experience, gone.

The government's breakup of ATT is an interesting case study of lobbyist-written government controls versus free enterprise.

After the breakup, the ability to create an internet not limited by ATT and enforced by PUC rules opened up. Instead of the ATT-provided modem with PUC-guaranteed support for 300 baud (bit/second), inventors started encoding the data sent over the same lines and modem speeds soon evolved to 56,000 bits/second. A home connection to the internet became possible, first Fidonet etc over dialup within a group of users, then in another step Congress opened the internet beyond its initial military/government/university closed system and the pace of innovation exploded.

We live in a completely different world today. Compare visiting the city library and researching in Encyclopedia Britannica or the card catalog and finding very limited answers, vs looking for something in modern Wikipedia and Google. (Off topic - this progress hasn't improved family income for the majority of Americans).

Ok this is a very general discussion, I'm sure others know more precise versions of some details.

May you live in interesting times ....

 

[k0ua]

Ok this is a very general discussion, I'm sure others know more precise versions of some details.

May you live in interesting times ....

Yes, we do. Things change. As someone who made their living working for an interconnect company, then a CLEC, and then a LEC (local operating company) I have a pretty interesting prospective on things. I have been on all ends of the discussion (argument?) BUT, I say we get exactly what we want and deserve. We wanted "the" phone company broken up and stomped out of existence. This is what we got. Yes in the old days when money flowed like a river into the "the" phone company the service was better. Ain't no money now. You got what you wanted. Nothing remains the same, new technologies come about, and new levels of service. And it is probably all for the better.

Already now, many small children do not even know what a rotary dial desk telephone is when they are shown one. In another generation, land line service will be a very distant memory in the public consciousness. As for the lost knowledge, many of us old timers have...Well put it this way, it becomes less useful every day. I still get calls occasionally, even though I am out of the industry from techs's wanting to know what I know about some old piece of equipment that is still in service.. But day by day, these things are being phased out. And my knowledge while vast of old technology, is worthless. Life goes on. I am an insurance agent now, specializing in Medicare supplements and other products. Can I help you with any questions you may have about Medicare? There is a lot to know