Thanks for the information Eric, and thanks to everyone else for their observations. The ability to have some basic service in the event of a long-term power outage does seem pretty important.
All the discussion of cheap, basic phone lines made me recall the cost-saving choices made by a friend's parents who didn't want to pay as much for a residential phone line. They had a party line. I can recall being at their house and picking up the phone to call someone, and I was always surprised hear someone already on the line. Probably the worst thing about sharing the party line with my friend's family was the fact that has father used to bring a very early version of a computer with a modem home from work (it had a keyboard, a printer, and a "modem" that was hooked up by placing the phone handset into two rubber cups.) His sons were budding programmers and they used to use that thing a lot late at night. Probably drove their party line "parties" nuts. I don't remember when party lines were phased out, but this was all back before the Bell System was broken up. Scott ----- Original Message ---- From: Eric S. Sande <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: COMPUTERGUYS-L@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Sent: Saturday, April 12, 2008 2:15:18 PM Subject: Re: [CGUYS] Signs of the arrival of FIOS >In the past I have tried to get info on this kind of service and found >nothing. I wanted to get it for my 90 year old Mom who never uses the >phone and should not be wasting her social secutity check on enriching >the phone company. I think "lifesaver" is an urban myth disseminated by >Verizon to make us think they are less evil. Ir's called "Lifeline". Check it out here www.lifelinesupport.org . ************************************************************************* ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** ************************************************************************* __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ************************************************************************* ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *************************************************************************
