Additionally, post Sandy, the phone lines were down for weeks. I got tired of waiting, and finally got rid of our landline wired phone, replacing it with the Home Phone Connect Device . This is a small device, about the size of two blocks of cream cheese side by side, and inside it is a tiny cellular phone, a dialtone and ring-current generator and a few other things, and it replaces your wired landline. It connects to the existing in-home phone wiring, all of the home phones work just the same as before (you hear a dial tone, the phones ring, you dial numbers as normal), but the "backhaul" to the central office is via cellular.