Do You Have A Landline? (raise, problems, love, California)
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Yep and even living in the north Chicago burbs I feel like hanging up half the time someone tries calling and conversing from their cell phone. I use my cell phone only when I am away from home. Note to cell phone people. Just because you can hear me and you can hear you does not mean that you are nothing but a broken up mess on my end.
A side note. I was at a clients house yesterday who's call to me totally dropped out the other day. She was using her cell at home. It seems that Ohare airport changed a flight path and ever since people have been having problems in certain areas according to Verizon. Not sure of the science behind that issue though. Curious.
I figure my $35/month smartphone plan is enough. I do not have cable TV or internet either to keep costs low. I just piggyback off the numerous open wifi networks I can receive in my apartment. I live on basically what amounts to teenager wages so every dollar saved helps.
We keep VOIP landlines at all houses and also have smart phones.
Several times a month we're on hour-long conference calls or perhaps on hold for 40 mins trying to get through to some governmental entity, and I just don't want to do that on a cell phone.
I figure my $35/month smartphone plan is enough. I do not have cable TV or internet either to keep costs low. I just piggyback off the numerous open wifi networks I can receive in my apartment. I live on basically what amounts to teenager wages so every dollar saved helps.
You are SO lucky you have access to open wifi networks where you live. I work in other people's homes and everyone has password protection (yes, they give me the access but still....) and even in my own condo or former apartment I could never find an open wifi! I can manage to find a couple for "guests" in senior communities I work in.
I keep a landline in case of power outages and also because it's useful for watching PPV movies on DirecTV (although I do that infrequently). I have the lowest level of landline service, so much so that I can only call within my immediate county, although anyone can call me. That's useful because my sister in Idaho can never remember my cell phone number, even though the call quality is SO much better. Oh well...
Have your alarm co. change you to a wireless panel. 2 good reasons;
1. If the bad guy goes to your demarcation point (a little grey box on an exterior wall) it is easy to disconnect your in-house wiring from the telephone line. No telephone line, no call to monitoring system.
2. It will eliminate the monthly telephone company bill.
I think they call it the interface box. Ours is inside the basement. The lines are under ground. There is no access to the phone lines outside the house.
I figure my $35/month smartphone plan is enough. I do not have cable TV or internet either to keep costs low. I just piggyback off the numerous open wifi networks I can receive in my apartment. I live on basically what amounts to teenager wages so every dollar saved helps.
Anyone that doesn't password protect their wifi is absolutely crazy. One guy found out the hard way when the SWAT team blasted their way into his house and arrested him for downloading child porn. Eventually is was determined that his neighbor was the culprit and had been using the unprotected network of the guy who was initially arrested. I use an extremely long and strong password for my router. Cheap insurance for protecting my network.
I still don't understand why people keep saying they have a landline in case the power goes out. What about no electricity affects your cell phones?
The Cell towers will only work as long as they are powered. Most have backup generators to keep them running, but may be limited by the fuel supply, And the ability to resupply them with fuel.
The Landline (Central Office) has the same issue, of needed to re-supply the fuel to the backup generators.
But landline have more of a "power issue" now. Many POTS lines do not go all the way to the central office as a dedicated line, they go to Multiplexers along the path to the CO. Roadside cabinets that take hundreds or thousands of POTS line and multiplex them into a fiber-optic connection, or multi-stream then down some copper lines to the CO in parallel. The Power to the Landline POTS phone come from the Multiplexer cabinet. All will have UPS battery supplies, but few will have backup generators. So when the UPS battery dies, so does the POTS landlines.
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