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AT&T applies to end obligation to service landlines in California

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Re: AT&T applies to end obligation to service landlines in California

#21

Post by matthewmacleod »

pizzafeelsright wrote: post #13

Related, I am not sure how to teach a toddler to call 911. My cell is locked and I'm not giving them the pin or face. Without a land line I am considering an exterior alarm wired to an inside panic button. In the evert I collapse from choking on a banana slug what does my toddler do? So far the I instructions are to ring the trusted neighbors.

You don’t need to be able to unlock the phone home in order to place an emergency call. In an iPhone trying to swipe-unlock will show an “emergency” button, for example.

Re: AT&T applies to end obligation to service landlines in California

#22

Post by dilyevsky »

Fezzik wrote: post #7
Animats wrote: post #4

That's going to be hard for people on criminal home confinement. Those anklets connect to a base station that connects only to an analog land line. Most of those things are obsolete technology.

Don’t they have a few GPS-only units now where all the hardware is in the ankle bracelet? I work criminal-law-adjacent and I feel like I see booths for them at conventions. If so, this sounds like a great opportunity for more vendor grift… I mean government thrift.

Yes gps bracelets have been a thing for years

Re: AT&T applies to end obligation to service landlines in California

#23

Post by thyrsus »

A decade or so ago, we had an ice storm take out power for much of the town for five days. Because the copper pair was still intact and powered by the central office, we never lost phone service.

This week, after heavy rain, the copper lines, which one technician said had cheap paper insulation, stopped working. A different technician got outgoing calls working again, but incoming calls (the higher voltage ring signal) were still failing, and AT&T told their technician not to fix it. We were forced to transfer our service to fiber, which was already present for internet. The AT&T fiber router can drive our existing handsets, with replacement crawlspace wiring reasonably priced.

My UPS lasts 90 minutes, nowhere near five days. Sometime over the next year, I'll probably get a Generac attached to our gas line - the tree canopy makes solar impractical.

I'm lucky that I can afford these worse alternatives. Many can't.

Enshittification is seeping into the physical layer.

Re: AT&T applies to end obligation to service landlines in California

#24

Post by ocdtrekkie »

foolfoolz wrote: post #19
beenBoutIT wrote: post #10

Have California cell networks gotten to the point where they'll be able to handle the mass calling that follows disasters? Curious how people will contact emergency services and friends/family in the critical time following an earthquake/fire/etc.

for the most part, things are much better than they were 10 years ago. you can go to a baseball/football game and your phone works. you can go to a concert and your phone works. a big part of this has been capacity upgrades, protocol upgrades, and a shift from telecom traffic to internet traffic it has always been difficult to contact emergency services following an earthquake / massive fire. it might actually be mor…

At this point the problem is likely less technical than limited manpower to actually answer phones when the call volume goes up 5000%.

Re: AT&T applies to end obligation to service landlines in California

#25

Post by Traubenfuchs »

pizzafeelsright wrote: post #13

Related, I am not sure how to teach a toddler to call 911. My cell is locked and I'm not giving them the pin or face. Without a land line I am considering an exterior alarm wired to an inside panic button. In the evert I collapse from choking on a banana slug what does my toddler do? So far the I instructions are to ring the trusted neighbors.

On iPhone you can enable it to send an SOS message to a selected contact + call 911 by pressing the power button 5 times in quick succession.

With electric shock collar assisted conditioning, the average toddler should be able to learn how to do that in just a few days.

Re: AT&T applies to end obligation to service landlines in California

#26

Post by fmajid »

The companies that used to make phone switches (Nortel, Lucent) went out of business over 2 decades ago and they are unmaintainable. Building modernized VoIP-based landlines that still offer the 48V analog POTS interface would be phenomenally expensive, and the market of Luddite little old ladies like Pereira who cling to landlines is just not large enough to make it financially viable, unlike the market for broadband.

What Verizon did was sell the business to Frontier, a company everyone knows is going to go bust, but Verizon is rid of the liability. It’s long pas time regulators stopped the quixotic quest to preserve and outdated technology there is simply not enough demand to keep alive.

Re: AT&T applies to end obligation to service landlines in California

#27

Post by ocdtrekkie »

beau_g wrote: post #6
pkaye wrote: post #3

If someone wants to remove the old lines from the pole to the house, who would do that now? I don't use my landline anymore and trying to cleanup the clutter of old lines.

When some branches brought mine down in a storm, I cut mine off on the house side, spooled it up secure with electrical tape, and hung it low on the pole on the street side. Probably shouldn't disconnect it at their box but past there it's yours if you own the house.

Legally I believe it is there equipment up to the cable modem. I would bet what you did is technically illegal depending where you are. Additionally, unterminated lines to a coax network can cause RF interference, and you may actually have created a detectable problem for other people in your area.

Re: AT&T applies to end obligation to service landlines in California

#28

Post by istillwritecode »

My wife keeps a land line because of superior voice quality for calls to her family. I find it handy because I can give a number to businesses when they demand one. We never answer that phone (it has been silenced from ringing). AT&T has no broadband service in my area - they offer only DSL and I live in a fairly rich area of silicon valley. The problem is that my utilities were put underground when the house was built in the 70s, so it's too expensive to upgrade the utilities.

Re: AT&T applies to end obligation to service landlines in California

#29

Post by labster »

dilyevsky wrote: post #18
pizzafeelsright wrote: post #13

Related, I am not sure how to teach a toddler to call 911. My cell is locked and I'm not giving them the pin or face. Without a land line I am considering an exterior alarm wired to an inside panic button. In the evert I collapse from choking on a banana slug what does my toddler do? So far the I instructions are to ring the trusted neighbors.

Emergency calls must work in locked mode (i think by law). On iphone its two button press and a swipe - def easier than operating a rotary phone from when i was a toddler

That depends on where you live. It’s definitely easier to dial 112 on a rotary phone than 911 or especially 999.
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