I live in one of those areas Verizon sold off their pots service.
Many of the folks in this area are considered rural.
The only options we have are pots or cell. No local VOIP offered here.
Right now I am working with my pots service to get a 6mps DSL
service. Looks like I will be sticking with cable.
We are supposed to have a competing cable service within the next 6
months. They are expected to offer VOIP. (They are presently
running their trunk lines)
Once you get outside of the big metro areas, pots still reigns.
Stewart
At 01:12 PM 1/1/2010, you wrote:
Well, I wasn't "called on it." I was asked to provide a link to
show that AT&T had petitioned the FCC. In fact, I was wrong about
that. They did not petition the FCC, but rather informed the FCC when
asked for their opinion on the subject, and made it perfectly clear
that they no longer want to continue with landline service, are ready
to tear it down and want the FCC to have a timetable set for the
dismantling of the landline system. Petition or not, the intentions
of AT&T are obvious and they have now formally notified the FCC of
their position on the issue. I will presume that the petition will
not take long to materialize if the FCC does not move in the direction
that AT&T desires.
> In fact there's really no news here. As the articles state, we're down
> to 1 in 5 households that only have a landline, and that number is
> dropping all the time. When, not if.
Well, this new event is news. Were it not news, it would not be
making the rounds of tech and financial sites. The dismantling of
landline phone service is actively moving over the bureaucratic
hurdles to becoming a reality ASAP if certain interests hold sway.
What does it mean that 1 in 5 households only have landline service?
Does that mean that a lot of those households are located where there
is no cell phone service? I have both at my house, but I cannot get a
cell signal here. I can only use my cell when I leave the house.
Ditto for others in my general area. If someone living in a given
household has a cell phone, does that necessarily mean that phone is
generally available for all others who live there? That 1 in 5 thing
is a pretty nebulous stat that doesn't really respond to many aspects
of the issue, in my opinion.
Could it be that a landline system provides a reliable and therefore
perhaps even necessary parallel communications system to cell phones
in the event of emergency situations? Could that constitute a
national or regional security issue? I recall that in numerous
emergencies, cell phone systems exhibited failures because of high
usage levels and/or power outages. VOIP is used to provide further
indication that landlines should be done away with. Isn't it true
that VOIP cannot generally be used to access the 911 system? That
could be a bummer.
Steve
Rev. Stewart A. Marshall
mailto:popoz...@earthlink.net
Prince of Peace www.princeofpeaceozark.org
Ozark, AL SL 82
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