Power outages and land lines (Aiken: hotel, house, live)

[debee2000]

Ok, we are moving in the Aiken area before year end (cross fingers, selling our old house before getting house down there).

When we were there this guy at the kiosk in the mall said that no one uses landlines cause of all the power outages and telephones down.

SO was he right? You do have a lot of power outages and now one uses landlines? I have both a cell and landline but use cell for longdistance and when away from home, otherwise I use landline.

Thanks everyone!

[moedog]

Man, just goes to show some people will lie to make a sale. Regarding power outages, the only problem SC has is when a ice storm hits, which might happen every 5-10 years. That can be a problem--otherwise electrical power is very dependable. In any long term power outage, cell phone service becomes very iffy. First, please remember that cell phones have to be recharged quite often. If power is off, you cannot recharge them, unless you have a car charger, which many people don't have. Also, the cell phone towers have to be powered, and not all sites have generators---in a long-tern power outage, many will eventually go down. Landline telephones, on the other hand, are much more dependable and do not depend on local electrical power sources. In SC, almost all telephone lines are undeground, so seldom affected by ice or wind storms. I would strongly suggest you have lineline telephone service for use in emergencies. They are much more dependable than cell service.

[debee2000]

thanks, I had a feeling he was full of hot air, cause just earlier that week Aiken had a nasty storm (which was the first few hours I was there ALONE in a hotel room) where the power went out a few times but never stayed out.

Just proves to you that not all people are trustworthy and that is why I come here to ask questions.

Thanks again!
Deb

[MandyinAiken]

I work for the electric company (I won't say which as to not get in trouble for representing myself the way they might like lol) and Aiken has no more outages than really any other place. The new developments are underground mostly, so the issues with squirrels taking down transformers and such isn't that big of an issue unless you live out in the country.

I worked during that big ice storm a few years ago and it was NOT fun....aiken LOVES its trees and cutting one down is like a cardinal sin here- so when all those trees- big and little- started pop pop popping with the weight of the ice, we had some major problems. But other than that, Aiken is no worse than any other town for outages. And the only reason we MIGHT have phone outages right now is because Bellsouth was bought out by AT&T and they have been doing some upgrades, which is a good thing!