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You've Dropped Your Landline — Now What?
smurphmeister writes "My wife and I recently moved up to the world of cell phones, after taking our sweet time to make sure this whole newfangled technology was going to stick around. We moved the old landline phone number to her phone, so we're disconnected from the pole. Now the question is, what to do with the copper already in our house? My first thought was an intercom system, but that just seems so old school! So what ideas do you all have for what to do with the 4 little wires running to every room of my house?"
1) If you got the budget, rip it out, replace with Cat6, if Fiber to the home comes to yours, you'll thank me later :-)
2) The intercom idea isn't bad, depends on the size of your house (what happened to "just yelling" sheesh)
3) Just yank out all the copper and sell it, few bucks anyways
At any rate I'd make sure you're real sure you like being away from your landline. Give that decision a 6 month wait period before you decide to recycle your wires one way or another.
...in bed
Errmmm... have you ever seen telephone wire? I can't imagine there would be more than few ounces of it in his entire house. The effort of stripping off the insulation wouldn't be worth it.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
There's more important things to worry about.
Move on.
AT&ROFLMAO
What is this "net"? Just use the first line as a telegraph line. Hook it up to a lightbulb or something.
the kind of radio where you can listen to ideas too far off in the ideological fringes to make it onto the Internet
Alas, it looks like the fringes have already arrived.
Maybe you're doing most of your chatting on the cell but there's still some good reasons for a landline:
1) home fax machine
2) landline more likely to function in an emergency as cell systems usually overload and are unavailable
3) landline call to 911 is more likely to show your address to the dispatcher possibly saving your life with a faster response
4) landline will not be lost or misplaced
5) landline more likely to continue to function during an electrical power failure
6) landline can provide emergency dial-up internet service
7) landline will not expose you to uhf radiation
8) landline will not suffer from battery failure
9) landline will not suffer from poor signal quality
10 landline is legally much more difficult for authorities to eavesdrop on
It's only required to be Cat3, but it's possible (unlikely though) that he has Cat5 or higher run through his house, with only four of the eight wires terminated. Were I to build my own house, I'd go this route, myself, and this is what they did at a networking lab I used to work at instead of buying phone extension cables.
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And you don't have any doubt about the reliability of the cell system?
And in an emergency where POTS is the only functioning technology.
Mature systems that have been tested in dire situations, old fashioned switched telephones and HAM radios come to mind.
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
Not that any Slashdotter would know anyone that might get arrested.... Still one should be aware that in many places (like Texas) your "Phone Call" has to be a collect phone call through some third party (don't know the name of the third rate company in Texas), and they won't make a collect call to a cell phone.
So.... If the police show up at your daughter's apartment because of a domestic disturbance call, and she isn't entirely interested in letting them search the house (like she is studying for finals barefoot in her night gown after finally kicking out her very loud boyfriend) .... And the police are so worried that she is being held against her will and being beaten up by her boy friend that they throw her on the ground and beat her up and haul her to jail....
THEN when she tries to call you and you have no land line.... You will not be disturbed.
THEN she will get tossed barefoot on the streets at 4:30 am in her night gown in downtown Austin Texas and will finally give you a call when she borrows a phone from a construction worker....
AND you will be thankful that you got 45 extra minutes sleep.
I am not entirely clear why so many states like Texas have decided that it is a great idea to only give people the right to a COLLECT phone call to a LAND LINE ONLY in this day and age, but that is the way it is.
TRUE STORY.
Maybe put nice blank plates over the jacks if it bothers you that much. By "better" I'd say fishing cat 5, cat6, or structured wiring to each jack and then home running them somewhere. A loop is no good, you'll only make what's there worse with any other scheme.
The only thing worse than trying to un-fuck the wiring in a new place you just bought because the last owner did some "project" is being that home owner and trying to get it all unfucked on your own because an inspector told the potential buyers that the wiring is all screwed up. Trust me on this. Your wife will be a defcon 0 with the stress of moving. You'll be either paying two mortgages or dealing with the close on your new place, trying to get things timed just right. (And they never can time things "just right.") The new buyers will be ready to close yesterday, except for the list of stupid crap you need to fix and or explain. A contractor will want to tear up walls and fix it that way, for a couple grand (maybe more if they know you're bent over the table) and you'll have to re-clean the place with that lovely drywall dust just about everywhere... And it's going to be about 200 degrees in your attic where you cleverly "hid" most your dirty work... If you're there forever, then knock yourself out, but if you plan on selling the place, just realize that a lot of people still like to have phones in rooms and phone service (even Vonage or 8x8 or whatever can run over the old loop if you plug it in to the house instead of a phone)
Or maybe the new buyer will get a kick out of your "intercom" system or home brewed HPNA, with the speaker about 2 feet off the ground where the phone jack was... You never know.
Leave it alone.
If you sell the house it will be there for the next person.
Really, why mess up perfectly operational systems just because you are not using it at the moment?
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
If that's the fringe, then so are these.
Edith Keeler Must Die
Leave the wires alone. You may need them again.
That said, feel free to mod this off topic if you like, but the question in the title made some of the voices in my head yell stuff at me that makes sense, of a sort.
The author of TFA went to cellular phone only, dropping wired service. In most cases/comparisons cell service costs more than wired service. That comes with benefits, primarily portability, but the fact remains.
I used to install home TV antennae for my dad's TV shop. For $200 or less a home could get 5 to 10 years of service picking up signals broadcast over the air. Portable TVs could with rabbit ears and loops could, in our area, pick up the same 10 stations (VHF and UHF) as the big rig fed to the house. For that matter even larger TVs came with rabbit ears back then, making the rooftop gear unnecessary. Then along came cable and direct satellite, and we get our TV fed to us by wire and/or receiver boxes, and pay a good deal for the feed.
In the first case we trade hard wired for unwired, and we pay more. In the second we trade soft- or unwired for hardwired, and we pay more. As I said, it makes sense of a sort, but some of the voices keep saying "huh?".
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
A phone today will break if you drop it.
At which point you run down to the store and pick from one of the several thousand phones that are available without having to resort to perpetual financing options. Or, even more horrific, you hook up a modem. Without asking permission.
Yeah. I remember those days too. :P
Depends on the state, apparently.
First hit on Google: http://blogs.consumerreports.org/electronics/2009/05/update-about-911-and-disconnected-landlines.html
Yes, the first thing I want to do if I hear a noise at night is put my face up to a wall, highlight my silhouette, ruin my night vision, and fiddle with some electronics.
Correction, I'll go downstairs with a bat, or gun, and a really bright flashlight to blind any intruder with before I bat them. And if it's a miscreant child, blind them and scare the shit out of them so they'll stop sneaking out at night.
I certainly do not intend to wait for authorities after putting myself at a serious disadvantage first.
Question everything
Yeah, Limbaugh is already all over the Net, just like I was all over your mom last night.
Although not having telephone jacks would not stop me from buying a house, it would drop my offer a few thousand dollars since I have to deal with the hassle of re-installing the lines.
Wow, I thought BT (UK phone company) were bad when they charged me £100 to install a line to my house.