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The Decline of the Landline
Death Metal writes "The phone network is thus not just a technical infrastructure, but a socioeconomic one. The more Americans abandon it to go mobile-only or make phone calls over the Internet, the more fragile it becomes: its high fixed costs have to be spread over ever fewer subscribers. If the telephone network in New York State were a stand-alone business, it would already be in bankruptcy. In recent years it has lost 40% of its landlines and revenues have dropped by more than 30%."
... keep your landline? we ended up disconnecting our landline ... we were getting charged like $70 for unlimited long distance, the whole 9 yards ... instead we now have a $70 cell phone plan that also has unlimited long distance, the whole 9 yards ... plus I can text message, play games, surf the net, and most importantly it's mobile. I can take it wherever I want. Why would you keep your landline?
If you really think you need one, I suggest getting cell phone and duct-taping it to your wall!
I might have kept a landline, if it weren't for the fact that the only calls that I ever got on it were Telemarketers.
how do you get back out of the Matrix?
Karma fed to this user will be promptly burnt. Be warned; be wary.
All that will happen is that the major telecoms will switch over to being infrastructure providers for TCP/IP-based communications. You may get VoIP through Comcast or Cox, but they'll have to buy their infrastructure from a division of Verizon or AT&T.
These days its getting harder for people to retain a steady profession and have to move quite frequently. This has made it necessary for most people to rely on the mobile phones as their primary line rather than the landline. Many people often have to transfer their landline calls to their cell phones when they are on the move. The limitations of landlines and the socio-economic situation of present is making it hard for people to consider landlines.
Face your daemons!
Kill it with fiber!
Grandpa still used the outhouse.
Man. I hate SBC/AT&T as much as the next guy, but even I think that metaphore was pretty harsh...
I can't get dsl where I am without subbing to a landline as well. A cable modem isn't really an option either since we have Directv and wouldn't qualify for any bundling deals from the cable company. If I could do dry line dsl I would in an instant, but I get to pay an extra $13/mo for my internet access instead.
In the area of New Orleans where I live (and didn't flood), the only way for people to communicate with the outside world was with land lines and old phones which are powered completely off the line (no wall warts).
Much of the cellular system didn't work. The remaining working systems were nearly impossible to use.
I hate using cell phones for more than a few minutes and always use a land line for long conversations. I also need to keep the land line for our alarm systems.
I was amazed to discover that my collection of 40s - 70s rotary dial phones dial perfectly on the Cox Digital phone system.
Who needs WW3 to realize the value of land lines? Did you not watch War of the Worlds (the George Pal version)? Remember the scene when the power failed and the phones were out, also? Normally the average power failure does not affect the landline phone system because it is on a different electric circuit. Anyone who truly wants to "stay connected" in an emergency needs to consider that very likely the landlines will still work after a power failure, and continue to work even after the cell phone batteries die and cannot be recharged. (Even if you had a solar-power battery charger, what of the power for the cell towers?)
It may be OK for the landlines to be removed from service (lotta copper there, to recycle), but only AFTER the wireless networks are robust enough for people to stay connected in emergencies.
Phone lines get power from the grid. You are correct that when the power goes out, the phones continue to work, and that is because they have massive banks of submarine batteries at the various exchanges to provide power for when the power is out. These batteries will not last forever, likely somewhere around 24 hours. My cell phone has a 5 day standby time (in theory)and I can charge it from my car.
I guess I am arguing that land lines aren't as robust as you might think they are. You cell phone battery will likely outlast the battery at the local exchange. Also, if there are major fiber breaks, it might take longer to restore land line service, becuase a lot of cell phone towers use wireless backhauls... Just my $.02.
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The decline of the landline is not due solely to changing usage patterns and technology but rather due to the anti-customer regulatory and business environment for landline phones.
A poster up thread was perhaps more insightful than he realized when stating that the problem with a landline is that telemarketers keep calling. After the MFJ, incoming toll was highly profitable for local exchanges, and they encouraged incoming toll, and lobbied to protect telemarketers, and fought things like caller ID.
And in the wake of the MFJ, phone service as a business changed from being a benevolent and responsible (if bureaucratic) utility to being a cost-driven race to the bottom. Service suffered. Innovation suffered. Prices for local telephone service went up. In the last few years I've received a disconnect notice for paying my phone bill two weeks late, I've been charged a $60 fee for the company to repair their own facilities (by a CLEC who said it was in their tariff because the ILEC charged them and they had to cover costs), I've had customer service reps hang up on me, and I've had service that was at best no more reliable than that provided 30 years ago.
And for this privilege I pay approximately $45 a week for a basic service bundle including caller ID and long distance. That is slightly more than I pay for my mobile phone. And is it somehow a premium service worthy of a premium price? Most assuredly not.
Technologically, the wired carriers should have an edge. The technologies are identical until the last mile. In the last mile, the wired carrier has essentially unlimited capacity and higher reliability. But that doesn't make up for the poor service and bad public policy upstream.
In my brother's area and my parents area, landlines stayed up for a day or 2 longer than the cellphones. But cellphones came back several days faster than the landlines. And some areas had cell service longer where the telecoms had put in sufficiently large batteries and generators (which isn't required for cell sites).
Not necessarily. One of the first targets in most WW3 nuclear scenarios is landline switching facilities, in order to disrupt the command, communication, and control of the opponent. Because of this, "dynamic adaptive routing" technologies, in which telecom links can be dynamically routed around failed links and/or nodes, is viewed in the US as a strategic technology the export of which is controlled -- see 5A991.c.9 in the Commerce Control List (p.8).
Nonsense, ham radio is far superior than land line, it gives the sound quality an earthly vibrant texture, unlike the harsh undertones of the land line.
If the landline would just compete with the cell network, not as many people would be turning it off.
I mean, if I could make my landline phone ring different tones for different callers, block calls from whoever I don't want to talk to (I'd be downloading the whole range of "Who called me" perpetrators from the internet), forward the phone to another phone remotely, either over the internet or over another phone, have voicemailboxes that would decode the voice, create text, and e-mail it to me at work or text it to me on a cell, and all the other features anyone can think of, then... maybe it'd be useful enough to actually want to hang onto.
I keep it because its WAAAAAY more reliable than my cell, but it could stand a lot of 21st century upgrading.
TFA misses an important point -- what we're seeing is the decline of POTS, not landlines in general. Broadband penetration is increasing; it's long since passed its critical mass and will soon be at a point where we can safely call it pervasive. "Triple play" type services are fast becoming the norm, and we will eventually get to a point where there are two providers in almost every locality: one former "phone company" and one former "cable company" -- although the differences between the two are rapidly becoming irrelevant.
The days of having "a phone line" are indeed drawing to a close. We are now entering the era where you simply buy a big digital pipe from one of the carriers in your area, delivered as a piece of coaxial cable, fiber optic cable (if you're lucky), or twisted-pair (if you're unlucky), and telephony is simply one of the services delivered over that pipe.
The true endgame, which I hope we see soon, is the dismantling of the PSTN as we know it -- where central offices become little more than colocation centers for telecom gear; telephone numbers will represent nothing more than an address on the network.
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Where is this cell phone with less downtime?
I can think of ONCE in the last ten years where a landline hasn't been working. And that because the entire town was knocked out due to a severed cable (and cellphones were knocked out too.)
Cell phone outages are a daily occurrence.
And what problems for the maintenance guy? It's two pieces of copper. What is mysteriously failing for you all the time?
Landlines, for me, Just Work.
most have backup generators and most urban areas have more than one tower. Redundant power + redundant towers + microwave transmission = high availability. Now that isn't 100% true all the time in all areas, but living in a hurricane state the only problem with the cell towers was they were jammed up from over use because all the landlines go down.... keep calling and you will get through. Wireless also has the advantage of being able to add extra capacity during an emergency by bringing in portable cells - they do this at many sporting events. They can be run right from the bed of a truck with a gas generator and a satellite or microwave link.
Get a web developer
I saw "artificial or prerecorded voice", had a feeling of disbelief, and looked for the statute myself. As written, it would appear to discriminate against people who use a speech synthesizer to communicate, like Stephen Hawking.