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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

#61

Post by colechristensen »

istillwritecode wrote: post #28

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 bui…

One thing which is absolutely infuriating is the noise cancellation of iPhones.

For me, with multiple people, it frequently aggressively mutes the microphone in noisy environments such that they're speaking and it's entirely silent on my end. You can't turn this off, there's no setting. I can't speak to my parents if they're outside and it's windy or if they're in the car, or often if they're just on speakerphone inside. It's ridiculous.

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

#62

Post by [deleted] »

dangus wrote: post #38
josh2600 wrote: post #30

I'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

[deleted]

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

#63

Post by fmajid »

fy20 wrote: post #37
fmajid wrote: post #26

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 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 ju…

Exactly, you need to have Internet service, and the phone is an add-on to that. What you won't get is a standalone emulation of Alexander Graham Bell's Plain Old Telephone Service without also having to pay for the broadband.

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

#64

Post by PeterisP »

istillwritecode wrote: post #28

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 bui…

If you need to give out a number that you'll never pick up, why not just use any random non-working number?

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

#65

Post by solardev »

_Algernon_ wrote: post #60
fmajid wrote: post #26

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 broadban…

Holding people to obligations they themselves have taken on seems like a reasonable thing to do, but what do I know. TFA even illustrates why it is necessary. Pereira got her landline cut without a suitable replacement in place: >Pereira has relied on her landline for 58 years. She got a cell phone for the first time last year when her landline got disconnected, but she lives in a dead zone for cell phones. CBS13 had…

I wonder if it'd be cheaper for AT&T to just partner with Starlink and pass through a part of the subsidy?

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

#66

Post by sys_64738 »

h_tbob wrote: post #41
josh2600 wrote: post #30

I'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.

I wonder if that's because the USA is that stupid, or if it's just not as population dense as other countries with faster speeds? According to this statistic, it's not very dense, meaning it's super expensive to build broadband. Because it's pretty much a question of physical area covered, not number of people serviced. This stat says the USA is on the lower end of density https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.POP.…

> I wonder if that's because the USA is that stupid

The USA is a continent made up of 50 countries [states]. Think European Union. Most people don't grasp or understand the sheer size.

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

#67

Post by throwawaaarrgh »

It is insane how reliable landlines are, though. When the power goes out, you can make "candles" by connecting a 0.47 uF capacitor to a LED leg and connect both ends to the red and green phone wires; there's enough voltage to power a couple of them without the phone going off the hook.

In an emergency, the lines don't get clogged like cell phone towers, and the Telco infrastructure is much more protected than wireless (you'd have to bomb a pretty big building with no windows to take out a small area's lines). It's probably fine in the grand scheme that we lose these properties. We'll just reinvent them later if it turns out we miss them.

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

#68

Post by MereInterest »

kallistisoft wrote: post #33
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 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 l…

I learned this when the power button on my Pixel 3 started repeatedly firing. My phone started repeatedly rebooting, opening the camera, and calling 911, all with no user input.

Because the phone was booting up and initializing the camera, the GUI would take a while to respond. It would display the “slide to cancel”, sometimes overtop the camera GUI, and wouldn’t respond when I tried to cancel it.

The only thing that stopped it was running out of battery. This started at 10 PM on a Friday night, and lasted a few hours.

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

#70

Post by fundatus »

fmajid wrote: post #26

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 broadban…

> Building modernized VoIP-based landlines that still offer the 48V analog POTS interface would be phenomenally expensive

Not sure about that, this was done for the whole German phone network a couple of years ago. People can still have their analog phone directly connected to the socket in their house but now their call will be a VoIP call. Not sure where the transition from the analog signal to VoIP happens, but I guess it's a the end of the customers copper line.

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