Death knell for landlines - RANT

[sixdogs]

I have a little phone story you might find interesting. I always liked At&T and viewed them as the best so when portable phones came out in the early 1980's I wanted the best so I bought an AT&T phone for a premium price. A few weeks into owning it, the aerial snapped off. It had a warranty but I soon found out that didn't cover the aerial. Duh, why not?

Anyway, you couldn't just replace the aerial, the phone had to come apart and AT&T repair wanted a dollar a minute to fix it for who knows how much. I paid $100 plus for the phone. I was so mad about this planned obsolescence, planned repair that I called AT&T corporate and I learned long ago to call the top dog. That was John deButts and I asked for him by name and to my surprise, he answered his phone.

We talked and when I explained I bought the best and wanted the best and not some trickery of an inferior product. I knew my stuff and he asked for improvement suggestions. We bantered back and forth, learned we were both hobby farmers while juggling the day job. We had a good conversation and he asked if I would be willing to test a prototype but soon to be released phone and give my opinion. Uhh, OK, sure. A few days later a new phone showed up that had a replaceable aerial, far different styling and instructions and other things I can't recall. It was noticeably different. It was a premium product and I don't recall ever seeing that model elsewhere.

What a great experience from a smart man and it kept me loyal to AT&T for a long time. Sadly, I learned he developed some rapidly progressive disease and died a few years later. He would have been a TBNer.

 

[PILOON]

Everything was Bell System Property... if it broke they fixed it.

Was surprised today to see all the ATT vans out working at individual homes... seems the U-verse guys are always working.

Yep! you paid $4.00/mth for a phone that Nortel sold to Bell for $5.99. Then Bell demanded government subsidies to maintain the phone system. Meanwhile Bell owned Yellow pages that owned jet aircraft to transport the execs to posh offshore localities.
Effectively the essential service portion was always broke and could only survive if subsided. LOL, big joke well engineered by law firms.

Getting back to vans, Bell convinced folks that they'd be ahead if they were sub contractors to Bell and even helped finance the change over. The main result is they are no longer responsible to that pension plan.
(I have a few friends that are ex Bell and Nortel)

How do you explain that a Bell VIP states --good news, we only lost XX% clients last year? Bell wants you to abandon that land line!
It is much cheaper to service a cell phone (on a computer) than a land line.

 

[ultrarunner]

As a property manager I sure liked having one phone company... any tenant turnover was promptly taken care of and any service issues were repaired without additional charge.

When that changed... I found myself, as a property manager, now managing tenant phone problems... some rentals had as many as 5 lines...

It got to the point I would have maintenance pull out everything phone related except for one single wall jack usually in the kitchen... it really was that big of a problem the phone company shifted to the property owner.

All the the phones I have in the house and at Mom's too all say Western Electric... Bell System Property... not a Nortel in the bunch.

Way to go talking to the head man...

I did that once with the bank... asked by name for the big guy with 340 branches and he took my call and thanked my for calling... I felt 10 feet tall... I was still a teenager and they had offered a Visa credit card with a qualifying balance which I had and got the certificate in the mail... I was 17...

He approved my card with a $400 credit line... also stressed as a minor there was nothing he could do if I didn't pay... still with that bank today.

 

[MossRoad]

I remember when the rich people down the block had two phones in the house.... and their own line, too. Not on a party line. Those snobs! :laughing:

And I remember when the phone company would charge you for a 2nd phone in the house, too. So I started playing around with phones (I was 13 or 14 at the time) and figured out it was only 2 wires. That's it? Couldn't be simpler. So I ran phone extensions to several rooms in my parent's house and plugged in several phones. Man, they thought the phone police were going to come and take them to jail! :laughing: But they never came around to haul us away.

At our current home, I had our personal land line, and my employer paid to have a Centrex line installed at my house. Since we were on the same exchange, it was only about $8.00 per month for them to be able to reach me 24/7 with a 4 digit extension. I had a couple two-line phones, so it didn't take up any extra room on our desk. It was kind of funny, because someone at work would page me, and I'd call their 4 digit extension. In-house calls were one ring and outside calls were two rings. They'd hear one ring and assume it was an inside call and pick up. We'd talk and they'd say they'd be right over to my office. I'd tell them I was not in the building and they'd accuse me of not wanting to help them because they knew I'd called from in-house.

 

[/pine]

...it was only 2 wires...

A few months after upgrading from dial-up to DSL we lost the dial tone on the phones...the internet still worked but it was much slower...it turned out that a rat had gotten into the connection/switch box and chewed completely through one of the wires for our drop...we were able to browse web pages, receive and send e-mail through just one conductor...

 

[ultrarunner]

I remember when the rich people down the block had two phones in the house.... and their own line, too. Not on a party line. Those snobs! :laughing:

And I remember when the phone company would charge you for a 2nd phone in the house, too. So I started playing around with phones (I was 13 or 14 at the time) and figured out it was only 2 wires. That's it? Couldn't be simpler. So I ran phone extensions to several rooms in my parent's house and plugged in several phones. Man, they thought the phone police were going to come and take them to jail! :laughing: But they never came around to haul us away.

At our current home, I had our personal land line, and my employer paid to have a Centrex line installed at my house. Since we were on the same exchange, it was only about $8.00 per month for them to be able to reach me 24/7 with a 4 digit extension. I had a couple two-line phones, so it didn't take up any extra room on our desk. It was kind of funny, because someone at work would page me, and I'd call their 4 digit extension. In-house calls were one ring and outside calls were two rings. They'd hear one ring and assume it was an inside call and pick up. We'd talk and they'd say they'd be right over to my office. I'd tell them I was not in the building and they'd accuse me of not wanting to help them because they knew I'd called from in-house.

The phone police did go after the parents of one of my grade school friends... their crime was having a second phone called an extension.

The ringer draw is what tripped them up... the phone company wanted to bill back a year and the Mom said get a warrant if they were coming... in the end she did agree to start paying for the second line.

So after that... everyone at school knew you could have more lines... just disconnect the ringer...

Another guy whose brother was an electronics major at Cal Poly made money modifying phones that would nor register when calling out... very illegal... interesting just the same.

So back to my question... when is the phone company going to come out the apartment buildings to collect all their old junk that isn't being used?

 

[California]

So back to my question... when is the phone company going to come out the apartment buildings to collect all their old junk that isn't being used?

PacBell who gave (rented) you all those phones no longer exists. The phones are yours now, finally!