Dropped mine last year

We dumped ours 15+ years ago when the foreman for the telephone company told us he couldn't fix the line problems in our area because the telephone company wouldn't pay for it. He strongly suggested we go cellular. We haven't looked back.

Did not have a phone in my early years. You went by your friend's house and threw pebbles at the window to see if he could come out and play.

quote:

Originally posted by shovelhead:

Fifty plus years ago I worked in a car dealership in the city (Detroit) that had a direct phone line that at one time had been a carry out pizza and rib place.

1960, I had just gotten out of the Navy and started working for Bell Labs in NYC. I had an apartment in Brooklyn, across the street from Pratt Institute (an arts college) in a mixed neighborhood, but right on the edge of Bedford-Stuyvesant, which was a high crime, "don't go there" area.

My phone number was an easy mis-dial from a "gypsy cab" company. Friday and Saturday nights, around closing time for bars, I would get a pretty steady stream of calls requesting a cab at a bar. I would tell the caller that the cab would be there in ten minutes.

---

Another one: 1975, I lived in a west suburb of Chicago (not too many suburbs on the east side ), and starting shortly after Thanksgiving, I started getting phone calls from little kids, asking for Santa. Finally figured it out when I saw an ad from Illinois Bell for Dial-A-Santa with a phone number close to mine. I solved that one by contacting Illinois Bell's business office and telling them that they needed to give me a temporary unlisted number for the duration of the Dial-A-Santa campaign, and re-direct calls to my regular number to an intercept operator, who would "challenge" the caller and direct the call as appropriate, either to Santa's number, or if the caller was actually trying to reach me, to my temporary number. They did not want to do this, but I told them that it would be a lot less costly for them to do it at my request, than it would be through a court order. They understood my logic, and complied with my request.

Last year my brother's landline went dead and after a few weeks they received a letter stating that their provider won't be repairing the main line in the area (which was the problem) as there weren't enough customers in his area to justify it.

He lives in a town of about 12K and in a highly populated area of the town.

Wife hates cell phones, so she won't give up the landline.

So about 8 years ago I switched over to an Ooma VOIP phone system. About $8 a month and for whatever reason we never get any solicitor calls.

My Mom in the Oakland, CA area received a letter recently that they were going to discontinue landline service in her area in the near future.

I also use an Ooma VOIP as my "land line," a backup/supplement/alternative to cell. It was about $90 (at the time) to buy the equipment, then is $7.97 a month. My dwelling doesn't even have any wiring or jacks for POTS. However, any VOIP is contingent on having both electricity and internet.

I ditched the landline in 1999.

The thing that pushed me over the edge was the junk device that I bought from AT&T that they claimed answered and recorded calls. What a worthless piece of crap it was.

Yeah, we have had our Land Line since the early eighties.
Kinda hate to give it up but doing something to mitigate the cost is necessary.
At least now, not getting all the spam/robo calls on the cell phones, would kinda like to keep it that way.
Might have to do something like what ensigmatic did though.
Still, now your choke point moves to an Internet connection which I am not crazy about.

quote:

Originally posted by shovelhead:


Second call, I answer “What?” In my usual pissed off tone. The automated message says “Can you hear me?” to which I answer “No” and again I receive the click.

Never say the word "yes" to a telemarketer (scammer), or any unsolicited call. They can manipulate the
recording to make it seem like you said yes to whatever it is they are trying to do.

Ditched it many many moons ago, nothing but spam, telemarketing calls since we both had Cell Phones and it too was a part of the package from the internet/tv/phone program of the Cable Company.

Initially we just unplugged their phone device from the home lines, still had the number but it never rang anywhere in the house.

FYI copper is going away. The LEC’s are going to up the price continually as they no longer want to support it at all. On the business side they are already doing this so residential is next.

If you want ultimate reliability, primary and backup ISP to the prem. Your backup can be sat, cellular hotspot (just make sure it’s not your cellphone carrier, choose another co.) but ideally you’d want LEC/MSO. One ISP from the local exchange carrier (ATT, Verizon, Frontier, Windstream, whatever), and another from the multi-service operator (cable company basically, Comcast, Spectrum, Cox, whatever). VoIP will work over either ISP as long as it doesn’t need a static IP.

quote:

Originally posted by Prefontaine:
FYI copper is going away. The LEC’s are going to up the price continually as they no longer want to support it at all.

Yup. Though they're often (?) limited in how much and how fast they can raise rates by state-level regulation, such as is the case in Michigan.

Either way: POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) has become unprofitable. In some cases the original LECs (Local Exchange Carriers) have already sold their POTS businesses off to somebody else.

I believe I read where some of the remaining big carriers are talking about seeking government permission to begin shutting down their POTS services.

quote:

Originally posted by Prefontaine:
If you want ultimate reliability, primary and backup ISP to the prem. Your backup can be sat, cellular hotspot (just make sure it’s not your cellphone carrier, ...

I'm doing that, using an LTE modem. If the Internet border router detects the primary Internet connection going down it automatically falls over to it. It automatically "fails back" when the primary comes back.

But I am using our mobile carrier due to economics. The third line was free Besides: My only other options were Verizon (expensive) or "AT&T" (we hates).

I miss Landlines. They didn't require you to agree to a 1000 page TOS agreement.

quote:

Originally posted by Schmelby:

quote:

Originally posted by shovelhead:


Second call, I answer “What?” In my usual pissed off tone. The automated message says “Can you hear me?” to which I answer “No” and again I receive the click.

Never say the word "yes" to a telemarketer (scammer), or any unsolicited call. They can manipulate the
recording to make it seem like you said yes to whatever it is they are trying to do.

My late F-I-L got scammed by an alternative natural gas supplier. The state decided probably with a lot of lobbyist money in the right places to allow “competition “ in the utility markets here.

They recorded just enough of his conversation to make it appear that he agreed to the change. They offered to change him back for a processing fee of a couple hundred dollars as he was past the ten day window of cancellation so they said.

Only problem was the letter offering the no charge cancellation was dated nine days before the postmark, they were hoping that the “mark” would toss the envelope and focus on the letter.

I faxed a copy of the envelope and letter giving her one half hour to undo this or as I said to her “It’s a nice sunny day, Lansing is ah hour away and a nice ride on my scooter. I’ll just go to Lansing and file a complaint with my evidence and you can talk to the nice people at the MPSC”

Fifteen minutes after the fax I got a phone call “The contract has been cancelled”

quote:

Originally posted by V-Tail:

One ringy dingy …

quote:

Originally posted by Pipe Smoker:

One ringy dingy …

"Have I reached the party to whom I am speaking?"

AT&T informed me a few years back that my work line to my home had to be converted to their new U-verse thing... this was great... unlimited long distance and super fast (at least back then) Internet... how? because they had to install a new fiber-optic line.... the only issue is they have no clue as to how to actually run these in someone's yard so that it will not be damage over a short time... I like the fiber-optic so much I requested a second one for our home line... same deal ... fat guy comes out with a flat hoe and will bury the line 3" down... I told him to just go on and leave it exposed... this lasted about 2 years before the home line went out... when the 'older' AT&T repair guy came out I had already buried 125 ft of 1" conduit from the connection box at the street to our house for him to run the new lines through.

Every once in awhile I broach ditching our landline to my wife. Last house we needed one due to spotty cell coverage, down here in flat Florida there are no such issues. I was going to bring it up to her and then ATT had their fiasco. I might wait a bit now. Lol