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Nice to have cell phones and whatnot connected to the internet / cloud BUT......if the power goes out and cell towers don't work , you are SOL
without a land line - happened to my family waaaay back on 911 , I , however had installed my old fashioned hard line rotary phone in my kitchen because I thought it looked sooo cool with the color and patina lol it also had a real 50s' style ring
During Hurricane Matthew in 2016 that went through the Jacksonville area, power was out for about 3 days. The AT&T landline worked fine (unlike anything else in the house besides water) until their batteries in the neighborhood ran down (phone worked for at least 2 days).
We have a house phone, but it doesn't plug into a jack. We have a device from Verizon that plugs into an electrical outlet, and the phone plugs into the device with standard phone wires. It's not cell service, and it's not the internet. It's kind of a mystery to me.
It IS running over the internet. The 'device with the standard phone wires' is getting internet.
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Originally Posted by saintmj nyc
Nice to have cell phones and whatnot connected to the internet / cloud BUT......if the power goes out and cell towers don't work , you are SOL
without a land line - happened to my family waaaay back on 911 , I , however had installed my old fashioned hard line rotary phone in my kitchen because I thought it looked sooo cool with the color and patina lol it also had a real 50s' style ring
Yea... and my landline didn't work wither because the entire system was overloaded with phone calls. Cell NOR Landlines worked as far east as Ohio....
I actually have a landline that I had installed. It's through the internet but I work from home enough that it's worth it for outgoing calls. I live in a populated suburban area but there are areas of my house that have so-so reception and if I want to walk around taking a call, I prefer that. Plus I find the handset preferrable to the iPhone for long conference calls, and haven't found a bluetooth device that I prefer yet.
Check your cell provider, my parents have a device I believe they refer to as extender. It's basically a mini cell tower and provides service to their property. You need to be something like 20 foot away from it to connect but then it will work for up to about 200 feet away once connected.
With an analog phone hooked to a phone jack, I can call the power company to report an outage requiring their attention. Without it, I got nothing unless I drive 7 miles to the nearest point with cell reception.
Isnt the internet extremely slow, being plugged into a phone jack? those little wires were never intended to carry so much data and bandwidth.
It can be slower than cable, but for me, it seems fine. I think it depends on what your needs and requirements are. If you need faster blistering speed, then a phone jack might not be preferred. Some people have internet access through cable, which appears to be much faster than my phone jack. In our area, cable is provided by Xfinity (Comcast). It's fine for television service, but my understanding is that for internet use, they put bandwidth limits on users which restricts how much they can use. I also understand that the phone company is planning to provide hi-speed cable for residents in our area, but so far nothing yet. They're already doing that in newer residential and business districts.
We have only one jack in our house, but with the splitter, we can have two jacks. We have no problem using the phone and the internet at the same time. Admittedly, I had to run a wire long enough to go from the jack to reach the room the modem and computer are located. That was a good number of years ago. I could've run it under the house, but I didn't want to mess with doing that. I'm getting too old and creaky to be crawling around under the house. There are standard phone plugs on both ends of the wire.
The drawback for computer access is that if there's a power failure, both the computer modem and the wireless telephone base are dead. In such an event, I have an older corded phone that I can connect to the jack and continue phone service. Also, I have a laptop computer that will work until the battery needs to be recharged. Most power failures we've experienced are usually up and running again within a few hours. But the phone line still works for phone calls. All the main outside phone lines are underground. As I understand, there's enough juice to the line to keep phones operating and keeps the phone buttons lit up. Cordless phones that use a base are out of luck because the base requires being plugged into an electrical outlet. As you've probably noticed from some of the other posters here, there are still some very good advantages to having a land line.
My wife has a tablet with no need for a line, modem, etc, for internet access. But when the battery needs to be recharged, that has to be done by an electrical outlet, at least at the house. UPS (Uninterrupted Power Supply) devices can provide backup power for desktop or laptop computers, or to recharge a tablet. We don't have frequent power failures, but it does happen sometimes.
With an analog phone hooked to a phone jack, I can call the power company to report an outage requiring their attention. Without it, I got nothing unless I drive 7 miles to the nearest point with cell reception.
We're probably not too many years away from phone companies asking for permission to stop offering analog phone service. Once that happens in an area, they're really won't be much point to having phone jacks in homes there!
I tore them out when we remodeled but after Irma and my power being out for many days, I had to have Century link come and install one.
It wouldn't have made much of a difference to have left one or two since they were inconspicuous.
It can be slower than cable, but for me, it seems fine. I think it depends on what your needs and requirements are. If you need faster blistering speed, then a phone jack might not be preferred. Some people have internet access through cable, which appears to be much faster than my phone jack. In our area, cable is provided by Xfinity (Comcast). It's fine for television service, but my understanding is that for internet use, they put bandwidth limits on users which restricts how much they can use.
Assuming DSL is what you mean by phone internet it's probably about 3Mbps, that can download about 1GB per hour. The cap on Comcast is 1000GB per month. If you were downloading over your DSL connection at maximum speed for the entire month 24/7 you would not reach 1000GB.
The data cap is to prevent abuse, it's quite generous. If all you are doing is browsing web sites, email etc you will use a fraction of what is available to you.
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My wife has a tablet with no need for a line, modem, etc,
The landlines are pathetic where I live. Always static and outages 2 or three times a year. I have no phone jacks in my home.
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Nice to have cell phones and whatnot connected to the internet / cloud BUT......if the power goes out and cell towers don't work , you are SOL 
