My mom told me she was worried her cell phone might run out of battery and then she'd be unable to call 911.
It's funny how used to charging our phones we've become.
AT&T applies to end obligation to service landlines in California
31–40 of 217 posts
Re: AT&T applies to end obligation to service landlines in California
#32Have 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…
it works at a football game because they know about it and send in extra equipment to handle it.
Re: AT&T applies to end obligation to service landlines in California
#33Related, 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 some Android phones pressing the power button 5 times in a row will call emergency services. I learned this the hard way when I was very drunk and fumbling with my phone - cue a call back from 911 where I had to awkwardly explain in the middle of crowded bar that the call was made accidentally.
If you have a young child you may want to consider disabling this feature as it's very easy to accidentally trigger and law enforcement is required to respond if they don't receive and intelligible response!
Re: AT&T applies to end obligation to service landlines in California
#34I've kept my AT&T landline mostly to reduce the amount of spam calls on my cell phone but also to see just how long it would last. It fails every year or two from squirrels sharpening their teeth on the wires. The last time I had it fixed, the service guy told me I was the only active line on the street.
I've had the number so long, it used to be (415) instead of (650).
Re: AT&T applies to end obligation to service landlines in California
#35Have 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.
Not if the power goes out. Unlike landlines (which are required to have generators at the central office), cell towers are only required to have a battery backup that lasts a couple hours.
When we had the rolling blackouts in the bay area a few years ago, Comcast's cable network was the first to go, but the cell network didn't last much longer.
Re: AT&T applies to end obligation to service landlines in California
#36Related, 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.
> With electric shock collar...
Ah, that's the thing I've been missing all the time. All this time I thought it was about good parenting.
Re: AT&T applies to end obligation to service landlines in California
#37The 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 broadban…
Maybe they can see what is happening in the UK? They are planning to switch off the analogue part of copper phone lines next year, and people who still want a "phone line" (most people just use mobile phones) will be switched to VOIP service.
Almost everyone has internet and phone provided by the same company. For the last few years it's been a standard feature in all "modems" to have a analogue POTS interface. It just needs to be switched on in software.
Re: AT&T applies to end obligation to service landlines in California
#38I'm fine with AT&T no longer supporting landlines if they start supporting fiber to every household. US broadband is a joke compared to many other parts of the world.
Citation needed. The US is #8 in median speed for home broadband and #13 in mobile.
Considering that anything above 15mbps is enough for 4K Ultra Netflix I think the US is doing just fine.
Re: AT&T applies to end obligation to service landlines in California
#39I've kept my AT&T landline mostly to reduce the amount of spam calls on my cell phone but also to see just how long it would last. It fails every year or two from squirrels sharpening their teeth on the wires. The last time I had it fixed, the service guy told me I was the only active line on the street. I've had the number so long, it used to be (415) instead of (650).
I personally think that this reason to keep a landline also became outdated.
There are so many tools and features on cell phones to identify and stop spam, and it seems like carriers are finally starting to get ahead of it.
At this point the people I know in my life who still have landlines mostly get spam on them especially because they aren’t actually using the landline for much, so almost 100% of the calls going over the land line are low-value even if they’re not spam.
I.e., everyone I know with a landline isn’t calling friends or family on the landline, it’s more like a contact phone number to give to the electric company.
Re: AT&T applies to end obligation to service landlines in California
#40I'm fine with AT&T no longer supporting landlines if they start supporting fiber to every household. US broadband is a joke compared to many other parts of the world.
Citation needed. The US is #8 in median speed for home broadband and #13 in mobile. Considering that anything above 15mbps is enough for 4K Ultra Netflix I think the US is doing just fine. https://www.speedtest.net/global-index/united-states
Christ do you remember 15mbps? those were dark days.