I am just wondering how many of you keep a Plain Old Telephone Service phone handy? You know, one of those things with the funny cord?

I have one beside my bed, on which I take my middle-of-the-night calls to hit the road for work. No power, no calls, no work.

And don't ask why I don't keep my cell phone there, smarties! I'll tell you right now that with my ADD and being half asleep when I go out the door (oops! still wearing slippers...), it would never come with me. That's why it stays by the front door on a neck string.

Sue

I keep one around. It might provide service after an earthquake when the cell system will be highly disrupted.

thats all we really use..the $9.99 phones with the stubby antenna just go's out on dog walks or "call me when you get there" situations.the thrill of calling from the store about what sort of ice cream you want is gone.

I haven't had a POTS in over 10 years. If the basic service for POTS were comparable to what I get with Vonage or my cell phone, then I would reconsider it. POTS is just not worth the price. With Vonage, I get unlimited long distance and cheap international calling. POTS doesn't even come close for the same price.

Also, the reliability of my Vonage is comparable to a POTS. I have a backup power supply that provides uninterrupted power specifically for my Vonage system. The power backup has proven to be reliable during a few power outages over the years.

We actually have two POTS phone lines. One is strictly for the fax machine in the office, the other is the regular house phone line. The fax machine is connected to a battery backup, so I can call out from that as long as the line and the battery backup are working. Otherwise, we have two corded phones (kitchen and bed room) and four cordless phones. I also have an old rotary dial phone that I saved. Not sure why, but you never know.

I do! It allows me to work my fax most reliably!

We do because:

1) when everything else is out, POTS still seems to work (at our house anyway). For us, some way of getting a call out is critical given family medical problems. POTS is ultra reliable.

2) We also get our internet via DSL, which needs a POTS telephone line.

3) Local POTS provider has a low cost pay per call service, and our POTS bill averages 6-8 dollars a month.

We do. The old corded network seems to be much more reliable, especially in a larger-scale emergency. I gave up my cell phone at the beginning of the summer and haven't looked back. I like not being beholden to everyone all the time. I once had a secretary call my cell, page me, call my cell, page me, etc... for three minutes straight. She needed to confirm some non-emergency info for my boss. I didn't respond because I was going to the bathroom. I don't need that. My husband is the manager of a retail store and is basically on call on the time so he has a cell phone. I do carry one that's not activated, to reach 911 when we're travelling, but that's about it.

As I said in another post, I do want something for emergencies when we're not at home. We took our Scouts group camping this weekend and although all the other adults had cell phones, as the Senior leader, I did feel less responsible for not having one.

yeah... but it's cordless

I do have a corded phone in the garage, packed away, that i can pull out if needed. I use it for long distance, since I don't trust that cell phones don't cause brain cancer (yeah, studies say no, but where's the long term data?)

if you can find a self contained digital handset, there is an adapter with phone jack in and set of alligator clips out that would allow you to tap into any traditional service at the drop box leading into a dwelling(jump terminals till you get a dial tone)...six foot of cord with an adapter should be enough... most of the interface boxes have a regular phone line jack in them now but might need a nut wrench or screwdriver to open the cover... thought I might have to "borrow" service somewhere...there are a couple of articles on making a "lineman's handset" on the internet

I like to keep it old school.
http://i.imgur.com/20Kew.jpg

I've got one, right next to the bed.

VOIP goes out with the power. I'm not one of those must be connected 24/7 types, so the cell phone is off if I am in the house. The POTS is there, it's cheap, long distance is free and when bundled with my sat TV makes the sat TV cheaper.

Unless a phone line is cut - and that happened once due to contractors not being able to discern north from south - I have phone service, and 911 knows exactly where I am.

That phone is really cool ..I've worked at phone company doing internet support (up until recently of course) for over 7 years. I can tell you that the phone network has a number of advantages over other systems. Primarily due to heavy regulation on the POTS network.

Bear in mind cell/VOIP do not have these same prequisites:

1) All lines, whether in service or not must be able to dial 911.
2) 911 service takes priority over ALL OTHERS (to the best of my knowledge, it's numero uno lest there be heavy fees to the company involved)
3) Voice repair takes priority over internet repair (same).
4) VOIP 911 is not the same as POTS 911 - look it up.
5) POTS lines will frequently work in an emergency if the power goes out (all run by gigantic backup generators, usually at least 700hp diesel for a small community) - at least until the telco runs out of fuel for the generator.

Not to say copper wire networks are foolproof and faultless - far from it. But at least you know that on the by and whole if you need to dial 911, you can. At the end of the day though, it's a dead system. I personally use VOIP at home, but at least understand the benefits of a good old POTS line. Which is why I have a separate line hooked up (not in service) for 911 calls.

We don't have a landline phone at home. Cell service where we live has been more reliable. I used to keep a landline for faxing and babysitters to use, but I haven't sent a fax in ages and all my babysitters have cellphones.

If I have to, I can power the broadband Internet gateway with an inverter and make VOIP calls, in the unlikely event that the cell system goes down but Internet stays up.

I keep a POTS in my house, though it goes through the cable service so I also have it on a UPS backup.

Funny you should mention that, I was going through my panick bag and someone found my RJ11-cat3 wire with four aligator clips on the other end (for you non-techies, that is a telephone cord with aligator clips on one end) The perosn asked me why I had that and a cheep toy phone (the realy cheap phones that they sold for children to use, it has a dial pad that takes POTS conections, and a little cheap ear piece with mic.)

I explained that I started carry that when I was doing SAR, it was a great way to hook into phone lines incase of a true emergency and be able to call for help. This happened back when I used to do SAR in places where there were ocasionaly phone lines, but little to nothing elese in the area.

Haven't had a POTS since 1998 and don't ever intend to have one again. Yes they could be valuable in a large scale / regional situation where cell networks are overwhelmed but to date that has not occurred here. If and when it does, the POTS may not be working anyway...

Dropped out land line a few years ago after AT&T bought out the local company. The bill rose to $40/month for just plain service without long distance and the phone was out of service more than it worked.
My parents have the same issue, way out in the country near the end of the line any little thing in between will break theirs and it takes weeks to get it fixed.

I have a POTS, which is pretty much only used by my 10-year-old TiVo that still dials up to get its programme guide. TiVo are re-entering the UK and I hope to replace it, but I'll probably keep the phone as a back-up.

(I have also some spare free SIM cards that were acquired for backup, but they are probably expired now.)

I have a POTS, and will until they retire the system, if ever. Cheap insurance of sorts.

My wired handset is in the bedroom, all other POTS handsets in the house are wireless and will go out when the power fails. The wired handset is in the bedroom, with a heavy rubber band holding the handset in the cradle - in the event of an EQ, this will keep it from coming loose, and tying up the line. When I want to try to make a call, I just remove the rubber band.

I have two of the 'old' touch tone desk phones and we've got a hard wire landline. There are three cordless phones on it with the dinosaur phones, the computer (to fax or whatnot) but the nice part is if all the power is out, the old punch button phone works when the computer and cordless don't.

I need to maintain a landline for our alarm system and it has battery backup for it so, I should always be able to get a call out or in as long as the lines last and there is hard line service. That said, my wife and I have cell phones and I have a cell from work too.

Paul in MN -

I've lost power, Internet and cell service, once all at the same time (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_Blackout_of_2003).

I've never lost POTS...

And if I dial 911, they know immediately where the call originated, right down to the house, even if I can't tell them.

We use wireless phones through the house, but I keep a POTS plugged in in the master bedroom.

We still have our landline and several non-wireless phones around. However for a week after hurricane Ike the landlines in our neighborhood were not available. FEMA had taken over these landlines for their own use. I don't know if they did this for all of Houston, but at least 800 house around me did NOT have access to their landline telephone service.

During that time cell phones were very spotty, and even text messages could take over 24 hours to send. This taught me not to expect any phone service to be available in a big disaster.

-Blast

Its the opposite here. I've used my internet connection to report my power out a couple times and my (POT) phone out dozens of times. So my internet is been the most reliable, gas second, power third and phone last.

It seems that the best strategy is to keep your options open and diversify.

Seems like the best plan. Expect the best and plan for the worst, and all that!

I'm not even sure I could physically go back to a landline now. I use a WiMax based internet/phone service and after being on that for a year or so, Verizon's contractors came and physically removed the copper line to the house!

I'd imagine I'd have to pay for them to re-install the line.

A POTS phone is a MUST HAVE for your home. Even if you just keep it in a box, it's a crucial thing to have.

The phone is in the cupboard. The line is gone!

It's not the phone that's the problem...it's the $50 line charge for a phone that goes unused.

I still have a POTS line and phone. Very, very reliable service in my area. Unlike my cell phones, which have excellent coverage but the lines are oversubscribed -- any major event in the area leaves me trying many times before I can get a call out.

What defines must have?

If your home is on fire and you only have time to get out a door, then a POTS will not help especially if it is stored away in a box. This can apply to many other similar type situations such as your home being flattened by a tornado, earthquake. Home wiring and POTS damaged by a flood etc. I don't think all those people in Australia have had much use of their POTS lately. After the height of the floods, there was a news article on one of the Aussie news sites where Telcos were moving in and setting up emergency cell networks due to all the POTS damage that will take months to repair.

I heard you can still call 911 even if your home phone is not "connected" / active anymore... anyone know if this is true ?

I think your thinking of cell phones. When you turn off a land line the line goes dead, no dial tone, no power, no way to call

I do. Seeing as that dial-up is pretty much the only cost-effective way to get online in my location I keep POTs.

Just as a point of reference it also means that my willingness to view videos is quite limited. Downloading a single video, or a gallery or large pictures, takes forever and pretty much lunches my bandwidth.

The US really needs a universal service fee to bring broadband to everyone.

Why is that? If you live too far outside of town to get broadband thats the compromise you made when you chose to live where you did, no one else else needs to pay to give you a service you choose to live without.

What kind of Internet, and backup power, do you have that you have service when the power is out?

I have cable Internet, and UPS, but that won't keep Internet up very long.

This is false. Without a dial tone there will be no 911 service.

We have two active cellphones, a couple of inactive cellphones with chargers (unlike landline phones, a cellphone without an active account can still be used for 911), VOIP, and a HAM radio HT. I can power my Internet gateway via an inverter if I need to.

It's not impossible for landline service to stay up while cellphone and Internet service are down, but in my neck of the woods cellphones have been essentially 100% reliable, Internet roughly 99.9% reliable, and landline phones about 95% reliable.

I'd guess that at least half of my neighbors have landline phones, if that's the only way to summon help.

I'm realizing replies to the original post depend upon location. Overall, I consider my cell phone to be more reliable than VOIP and POTS, and I feel like VOIP is slighly more reliable than POTS. That's my feeling based on experience with all three where I live.

An emergency that is localized to my home is likely to be more pressing than an emergency that is region-wide. I figure the localized emergency will be something like a fire, home invasion or heart attack. The cell towers are likely to be operational if the emergency is just mine, and my cell phone is more likely to be near me. In contrast, a regional emergency will likely be of the type where I have time to compare notes with neighbors. I figure I'll usually have time to engineer a communication means or just make do without one. Bottom line, I plan ahead for the localized emergency, and I can improvise for the regional emergency if need be.



Comcast, Vonage and UPS

My VOIP has stayed up and running flawlessly through about 5 power outages over the last 5 years. One power outage lasted for about 5 hours. The UPS is dedicated to the routers and phone. Again, reliability depends on where you live.

cable, ups, laptops.

$50 - WHAT?

My "lifeline" service - bare minimum - is $12.95 a month...
I use it for my alarm system and incoming faxes.

Yeah, my POTS bill would be $50 ballpark after they add taxes and whatnot. If I start making calls on it outside of local, the bill could easily be $100+. My POTS is just not worth it for the off chance that POTS may be more reliable, which I don't think it is for my home.

Substitute telephone for broadband and 1934 for 2011.

We live in an information driven age and not everyone chooses to live in a rural or under populated area. You either grew up there or living in an urban area is out of your financial reach.

Broadband allows anyone to reach out to the world regardless of where you're located. It can, and does, bring jobs to areas whose historical industries don't exist anymore. The city of The Dalles was founded due to its favourable location on the Columbia for shipping fur pelts back East. Today, the fur trade is long gone and Google has a data center there.

Yea ... why would I want to subsidize the rural customers. I mean this whole newfangled universal mail delivery is stupid. Next thing you know people are going to demand every house have its own telegraph line. That's going to put the small time telegraph operators and messenger boys out of business. Have you no respect for the capitalist free enterprise system?

Sure, most of the western world, outside the US, has universal broadband at low prices but that is just so ... European.

We have to connect the land line to our pvr to order pay-per-view from our satelite tv service. This is the first time i've realized how stupid that is! LOL!

We had a meeting today at work about POTS. We're predicting in my line of work (alarm industry) that POTS will be 100% gone by the end of 2014. The majority of all new systems sold by my company are either cellular or long-range radio communication.

I've heard this prediction from several places, all with different dates. I have my doubts.

But assuming that it did go away, it seems to me that there is a very valuable infrastructure of copper wire going into almost every home in America. Could this be used to provide the "universal broadband" that several folks have mentioned? I don't know how much data that simple copper wire could handle, but I can't see this already installed access point going to waste.

The copper "twisted pair" has been used for ADSL broadband for years. The downside is that you can't be more than a mile or so from a node that is serviced by fiber optic cable. So, ADSL via twisted pair is primarily an urban item, with the telcos and cable companies duking it out in high density markets.

Broadband in my part of the world is generally going the way of line-of-sight fixed wireless. Satellite is available too, for more money.

Interestingly, I was able to get by with a fairly slow dial-up until about 2007. (Patch Tuesday was always a pain though.) This was the point at which every website and service seemed to assume broadband, and everything got "fat" with no accommodation for dial-up users.

I asked this question because a friend was telling me she had some wind damage earlier this winter, and a tree came down on her phone line, ripping it completely loose from her house. The power was already out. Her cell phone had had an unfortunate 'death by toilet' due to a toddler who is big on flushing. She knew her immediate neighbors only had electronic phones, but they did have useful phone jacks.

Sue

You don't even have to go into the house, just go to the back and find the grey box and open it up and plug your phone in there.

In that case, sure, I have a POTS phone sitting around. I just don't have the service. Any old POTS phone will work with my Vonage device.

For me the phone is provided by the cable company that also provides TV and broadband. I can't see it disappearing because it's a small additional cost once you've got the cable for those in place. Also I think wired comms is always going to have advantages over wireless.

Maybe I misunderstood what was meant by POTS. It is wired, and powered from the phone lines. I'm pretty sure it'd work if the household electricity failed, but I don't know about a wider failure or where it really gets its power from now. Interesting question.

Having the phone from the same provided as the internet means that if one fails, they'll probably both fail. However, it does act as a back-up to the mobile phone network. I'd have thought the under-ground cables would be more reliable than masts.

I suspect the only way to be sure of doing better is to get a satellite phone. Or a radio ham's licence. Neither of which I can be bothered with. The law of diminishing returns kicks in.

A cable Internet phone is not POTS, even though you may ultimately be using a POTS phone at your ear. Cable Internet phones operate through coax cables and need a modem, among other equipment, to operate. POTS operates via older copper wiring and needs no computer devices in your home besides the POTS phone.

http://www.networkdictionary.com/telecom/pots.php

POTS and PSTN will still be around for some time in the UK as the BT 21CN can't really cope with reliable IP based VOIP traffic, the multi billion investment by BT for its 21st century backbone network infrastructure is being constructed using cheap Chinese made routers etc (rather than purchasing British made nationally more secure Marconi kit), which has high latency and packet loss problems. The move to an IP based telephony, for BT landline and Virgin Media (the telephone is still using POTS/PSTN rather than a cable modem), which was promised a few year ago is doomed to failure. The network isn't even IPv6 capable.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/10/21cn_ipv6/

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/07/01/aa_bt/

Best to stick with the 50 Mbit/sec Broadband line from Virgin Media (the 100Mbit/sec is a little spendy for not really much performance difference). I do even though I can get free BT ADSL Broadband as going back to 3-5 Mbit/sec is really a no brainer.

I live in hurricane alley (South Florida). You would be shocked how many of my neighbors had no phone service during the last big storm because electrical power was down. The phone lines were good, but everyone had cordless phones that require electrical power at the base transmitter in order to operate. A simple POTS wired phone available for less than $10 at Wal-Mart would have been a salvation. I keep one permanently connected to the phone line in case of failure and a stored backup in case of a long term power failure. And has been stated, if you have Vonage or other broadband based telephone service, it will die as soon as your router dies from lack of electrical power. If you plan on having phone service during a blackout and have ditched POTS for an internet phone service, you need to be prepared to provide backup power to your router and cable or ADSL modem.

Craig