4 ms·
Its not so hard to "turn off" a landline. Turn down the ringer. If you have a cordless phone - unplug the base.
by ape4 5y ago
Its not so hard to "turn off" a landline. Turn down the ringer. If you have a cordless phone - unplug the base.
- Robotbeat 5y agoWasn’t so easy in the past. They were often hardwired. This is one of the things Amish people were against: bringing electricity into the home. Battery powered devices were okay.
- alisonkisk 5y agoWhere do batteries get their power?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Robotbeat 5y agoUsually a generator outside that you have to walk to.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- thebean11 5y agoThe phone itself was hardwired into the wall? TIL
- dsr_ 5y agoBefore 1973, the phone company owned the wires right up to the phone on the wall, and often owned the phone as well. Then the FCC mandated that customer-provided equipment be supported, assuming it met standards. The RJ11 jack (and siblings, right up to the RJ45 for ethernet) came into widespread use after that.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- jandrese 5y agoMa Bell kept and iron grip on the entire system until the Carterphone decision created a crack in their stranglehold. This is why when you see modems in old movies they have this crazy setup where you put the handset into a pair of rubber cones (acoustic couplers) because you weren't allowed to plug anything directly into the phone lines. You didn't even own the phone, you leased it from the phone company.
- abawany 5y agoOld habits die hard: getting internet from AT&T ime still requires leasing their 'modem' for a monthly cost while cable providers let you bring your own device to avoid the monthly fee.
- jandrese 5y agoOh yeah, those hardware leasing fees are a goldmine for companies. Every so often you see a story about some old timer that is still paying for the hardware lease on their landline phone and someone does the math to discover that they've paid tens of thousands of dollars over the years to lease hardware that costs $25 new.
- bluGill 5y agoThe hardware they are leasing costs more than $25 new, more like $100. Sure you can buy a phone for $10 at the store, but the phones people leased where a lot higher quality (drop one off the desk and your floor is harmed not the phone) with a resulting higher price.
- astura 5y agoThis is not true - I had AT&T DSL from 2009-2014 and when I signed up they didn't offer a modem rental of any sorts, they required everyone to bring their own modem, but they did offer them for sale. I was really short on money at the time and didn't have a DSL modem, I would have preferred to rent the modem but they said that wasn't an option - they could only sell me one.
- slacktide 5y agoWhen I was a kid, some of our phones were hard wired, some used a giant 4-pin modular plug. RJ11 wasn't invented yet. Pepperidge Farm remembers... http://www.classicrotaryphones.com/forum/index.php?topic=3365.0 http://www.classicrotaryphones.com/forum/index.php?topic=336...
- dredmorbius 5y agoYou couldn't sell a cover intended for phone books, a shoulder-rest intended for AT&T (well, Bell Electric / Western Bell) handsets, or an answering machine that would be connected to phone-system wiring. It was a pretty brutal monopoly.