America Gave Up on the Best Home Technology There Is

While weathering hurricanes in Florida, self-powered landlines were a reliable means of communication, even during a neighborhood power outage. It's sad to see these go.

Re: America Gave Up on the Best Home Technology There Is

#5

Post by MarkusWandel » Tue, Sep 12, 2023, 3:55 PM UTC

DanAtC wrote: post #2

Sadly the digital-only version isn't the same. Real circuit-switched lines are wildly expensive if you can even get one. Verizon and AT&T are doing their best to make that impossible.

From what I read, even those aren't "real circuits switched lines" any more, just a thin shim over an internal VoIP network. So you might as well bring the VoIP closer. Our house phone wires - and phones - are plugged into an ATA, and that connects to voip.ms - at "normal landline" usage, that costs about $5/month and we still have our old house phone number.

Of course it stops working if anything happens to our internet access, but we do have the cell phones well, and the answering machine lives in the cloud (and emails an MP3 if someone leaves a message) so the house number is never truly offline.

Re: America Gave Up on the Best Home Technology There Is

#6

Post by k310 » Tue, Sep 12, 2023, 3:58 PM UTC

Out in the woods, the home and the nearest DSL hub have backup power. Cellular is always a crap shoot.

And iPads can make phone calls via Wi-Fi, FaceTime and emergency calls.

I have yet to use a landline phone, even from the thrift store, even though the phone service is bundled with DSL internet at a lower cost than DSL internet alone.

The blazing fast internet revolution has not reached the woods, though I have never worried about making an emergency call via iPhone or iPad. CB talkies are on hand, though I keep batteries out of them to avoid corrosion from disuse over time (in years)

Re: America Gave Up on the Best Home Technology There Is

#7

Post by CharlesW » Tue, Sep 12, 2023, 4:04 PM UTC

k310 wrote: post #6

Out in the woods, the home and the nearest DSL hub have backup power. Cellular is always a crap shoot. And iPads can make phone calls via Wi-Fi, FaceTime and emergency calls. I have yet to use a landline phone, even from the thrift store, even though the phone service is bundled with DSL internet at a lower cost than DSL internet alone. The blazing fast internet revolution has not reached the woods, though I have nev…

> The blazing fast internet revolution has not reached the woods…

Starlink hasn't changed this?

Re: America Gave Up on the Best Home Technology There Is

#8

Post by nocsi » Tue, Sep 12, 2023, 4:21 PM UTC

You can buy a desk phone and connect a voip line if you really wanted. Otherwise I recommend against it because you’ll learn quickly enough how bad the robocallers/spammers situation is

Re: America Gave Up on the Best Home Technology There Is

#9

Post by uni_rule » Tue, Sep 12, 2023, 4:39 PM UTC

nocsi wrote: post #8

You can buy a desk phone and connect a voip line if you really wanted. Otherwise I recommend against it because you’ll learn quickly enough how bad the robocallers/spammers situation is

What is what this article is about, the author enjoyed having a VOIP-based house phone. Everyone just assumed it was about POTS because they don't read past the headlines.

Re: America Gave Up on the Best Home Technology There Is

#10

Post by mindslight » Tue, Sep 12, 2023, 4:45 PM UTC

nocsi wrote: post #8

You can buy a desk phone and connect a voip line if you really wanted. Otherwise I recommend against it because you’ll learn quickly enough how bad the robocallers/spammers situation is

I've got a dozen or so phone numbers, spread across VOIP assigned, GVoice, mobile SIM, and traditional landline exchange (transferred to VOIP). The only one that gets a significant amount of spam is a traditionally LL number. Based on the content of that spam and what they know (I'll often screw with them), I believe the spam is mostly based off targeted victim lists. I can't say how much GVoice is silently blocking similarly targeted spam. But the point is if you don't give out your number to lots of businesses such that it's not sold to the surveillance industry, it's not likely to get much spam.

I wish the author had expounded on their setup. I too pay ~$1/mo for VOIP DIDs, but from what I've seen of consumer-facing prices I realize that's a facet of getting nitty and gritty with SIP (which doesn't necessarily mean self-hosting, eg voip.ms).