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> I haven't had a "land line" in multiple-decades. I'd love to have a land line but it completely stopped working decades ago. After deregulation, no one was r

> I haven't had a "land line" in multiple-decades. I'd love to have a land line but it completely stopped working decades ago. After deregulation, no one was responsible. Countless attempts to get anyone to fix it were in vain. This year I saw a thick line completely knocked down by a fallen tree. I called the power company. They said it was a telephone line not a power line. And that there wasn't anyone left for them to contact to get it fixed. Asking around I found it actually didn't matter. No one was actually using it. No one has land lines any more. The technology is obsolete, irrelevant, and should be removed.

syshum 7y ago
The technology is also more reliable than modern wireless I remember many times where everything else was out of service except the good old POTS line...
- droithomme 7y ago
  That's great for you in whatever treeless desert area you live in. It's not the case for many others of us and it's kinda pretentious that you know oh so much better.
  - usrusr 7y ago
    It's funny how some regions insist on not burying their communication lines. Or maybe funny how others insist on burying. Because like so many things it's a tradeoff, what you win in reliability nines you loose in bandwidth trailing zeros. Upgrading underground infrastructure is so damn expensive.
  - jjeaff 7y ago
    I grew up in a very wooded area myself. And it was also my experience that when the electricity was out, the phone lines would still tend to work.
Aloha 7y ago
Until I moved to my current locale, I had pretty reliable landline service from century link and frontier, I've not tried to order a land line from AT&T yet, but it's theoretically possible.
BenjiWiebe 7y ago
I live in Central Kansas. In our house there's next to no cell service. We could switch providers, but then we'd be in a dead area every time we drove a few miles. No carrier has good coverage in our area. Without a landline we would even have trouble calling 911. Thankfully POTS is still alive here at least.

syshum 7y ago

The technology is also more reliable than modern wireless I remember many times where everything else was out of service except the good old POTS line...

droithomme 7y ago
That's great for you in whatever treeless desert area you live in. It's not the case for many others of us and it's kinda pretentious that you know oh so much better.
- usrusr 7y ago
  It's funny how some regions insist on not burying their communication lines. Or maybe funny how others insist on burying. Because like so many things it's a tradeoff, what you win in reliability nines you loose in bandwidth trailing zeros. Upgrading underground infrastructure is so damn expensive.
- jjeaff 7y ago
  I grew up in a very wooded area myself. And it was also my experience that when the electricity was out, the phone lines would still tend to work.

Aloha 7y ago

Until I moved to my current locale, I had pretty reliable landline service from century link and frontier, I've not tried to order a land line from AT&T yet, but it's theoretically possible.

BenjiWiebe 7y ago

I live in Central Kansas. In our house there's next to no cell service. We could switch providers, but then we'd be in a dead area every time we drove a few miles. No carrier has good coverage in our area. Without a landline we would even have trouble calling 911. Thankfully POTS is still alive here at least.