Future of landline telephone service?

Some areas of the country phone companies are on strike or there workers are. My question is this. Seems to me that landline service is on its way out and if we live long enough it will be replaced with cell or some wireless gadget. Many people have dumped it already and seems like the under 30 crowd does not bother with it. What are your thoughts here??? Is the phone crews going to be like the blacksmith???

We did away with our landline last year. I had insisted we keep it untill we were able to keep our landline number. I thought we needed the old number in case someone calls me to tell me I had cattle out. Now they call the sheriffs number & they call me on my cell. (It doesn't happen that often & most of the time it's my neighbors cattle)

poor cell service here we just put land line in. got old number from 25 years ago.

Here in Michigan the legislature passed a law written by and for AT&T that makes it easy for the telcos to abandoned landline service in rural areas. Meanwhile, the phone companies are deliberately neglecting landline service as a way to get their customers to switch to wireless.

A few months ago our landline went out and when I reported the issue I found it impossible to talk to an actual person. The automated system said it would be two weeks to fix the problem. I tried every avenue to contact someone at AT&T to escalate the problem. It's not at all difficult to talk to a live operator about wireless (I have AT&T cell service), but they had no luck getting me in touch with the landline service people. At one point I was connected to a woman whose apparent job is to apologize for the AT&T lousy landline repair service. She flat-out told me they don't have enough repairmen in Michigan and there was nothing she could do. I even went down to the local cell phone store and complained to the sales staff there. They eventually got me in touch with a repair dispatcher, who said there was nothing he could do to escalate our repair. Finally I filed a complaint with the Michigan Public Service Commission. I filed the complaint on the weekend and our service was fixed on Tuesday.

as long as I have DSL, I will have a landline phone. Our topography is terrible. I can go from 5 bars, to no bars in 1/10th of a mile. On my farm, I go from 1068 foot elevation, to 1320 foot elevation in 2/10ths of a mile. There is no way, without multiple cell towers just in these valleys, for me to have cell service in my house without a microcell on my dsl.

What land lines cost, the wife and I was just talking the other night about dropping it and keep DSL. The repair man said a while back that now he had 28 towns to take care of. I know there is another guy also.

Where I was raised we had an independent telephone system and by the 1990's they were getting into offering internet through phone connection. Our Telephone Company has become known as Hay Communications, named after the township , Hay. They have gone to selling and servicing cell phones as well as their land lines,most pole wire has been changed to cable underground. This is just the tip of technology as they have embarked on a fibre optics system that will bring you internet, cable and telephone in the clearest and most up to date manner. They have spent several million dollars and have even been able to sell fiber optics to other municipalities so that the town I live in has been wired as well. All summer they have been line boring and digging along streets and the system is ready , I have their wires right to the inside wall of my basement ready to hook into whenever I wish. This is a futuristic and aggressive phone company and hard wired phones are a guarantee as well as all of the most modern communications. Cell service is just part of it. Telephone companies will survive.

my land line going turn it into cell so keep number they have ahoues box you use in hook it to regular phone and it only took to day for repair mean to come sorta fixed mine oh i live in western ky he was from Mississippi go figer had no problem getting a person just keep tell machine i no speak english

If they do away with the landline phone we won't have any service as cell phones don't work in our area. It is funny as you drive around the area and people are standing outside talking on the phoneor on the roof of cars

when they finally abandon land line and take all that copper to be recycled their earnings and stock price will be amazing. Just thinkin

Will keep land line and get rid of cell if it comes to that. Cell is used if only on road and then for have to only case. And cell is talk only, no voice mail, no text, nothing extra. In the house phones say poor on service. Think just saw where trying to make law that land lines cannot be dropped.

(quoted from post at 18:04:00 12/04/14) as long as I have DSL, I will have a landline phone. Our topography is terrible. I can go from 5 bars, to no bars in 1/10th of a mile. On my farm, I go from 1068 foot elevation, to 1320 foot elevation in 2/10ths of a mile. There is no way, without multiple cell towers just in these valleys, for me to have cell service in my house without a microcell on my dsl.

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I don't have a landline, and I have a dsl. I think dsl around here is the fiberoptic stuff.

My point is, there will always be a landline connected to the house as long as I have dsl. My dsl is copper and is junk. can't watch hd videos on youtube...


I just don't see them removing the landlines completely, until they can get cellular towers to give proper coverage and similar speed. (not in my lifetime)

Phone company wanted me to go wireless with my landline phone, said it would cut my bill in half, as the device plugs into the interface box and works off a cell phone tower. However, if your power goes out, so does your landline phone. Lets not talk about dropped calls either. No thank you.

One thing to remember with a land line: When you call 911 they know exactly where you are.

Our land line service here is horrible. No DSL available as the lines are too old to handle the traffic and the phone company has no plans on upgrading it. So, three years ago we ditched it and went all cell as we were carrying cells anyway. After paying the land line bill for half a year and never using the land line because the cell was convenient we decided why not give it a go. TV and internet are on a dish so the old land line just became obsolete for us. I think land lines will eventually go away. Even at work all of our phones on our desk are IP phones using VOIP across the net. They seem to work good.

Greg

really thinking of getting rid for the landline after tuesday. was home sick and I mean sick. every hour the phone rang and all the calls were telemarketers. guess I dont know why I pay for it when when the scammers are the only ones the call the home phone. anybody that I know always calls my cell

This may be an old myth. We have not had a land line in about five years. The first year when I called in my burn permit for a brush pile (non-emergency police and fire number) I asked them. Her response was that it was not a problem at all since they had been required to make the upgrade for cell phone location a good while earlier. Cell phones for 911 will be no different than a landline here in my little Kansas county.

I used to think wireless connections would eliminate wired for internet access but not so. What I failed to consider was that as wireless became more reliable and faster wired became even faster--it's always going to be easier to go faster on a wired connection.

But my comments should not be taken as disagreement of you. Wireless is quicker and easier for new installations if the higher speeds are not required. Cellular style communications can move with you as well. What I predict is yes cell phones will replace wired phones. Existing buried wire phone lines and cable in most places (where profitable) will be mostly used for data transmission going forward. With the move toward higher def TV, movies on demand, etc more is required at homes thus most homes will keep either their buried phone wire or cable to receive that service.

Where problems come up is that unlike telephone service, internet service in rural areas is not subsidized so there is little incentive to bury or maintain to data standards phone lines to remote places and they might be abandoned if it becomes legal to do so.

Further note. There is still a use for "land-line" phone service in one sense. As wireless is still more expensive there are many of the younger cell phone people who are completing their cell calls not by cellular access but by via their home internet connection using VOIP and their cell phones are set up to connect to their home or work wireless network when in range--thus saving cell traffic and in some cases expense.

Check out Republic Wireless for what's here now and coming on big IMHO.
Republic Wireless WIFI/Cellular phones

NOT sure what your point is with this, but even here on the prairie/tundra in a little town with a couple of dozen occupied houses they did "fiber to the premises" and abandoned the "copper" landlines.

This requires a modem thingy and a "wall wart" to power it and a backup battery to make the same 'ol "land line" phones work (for a while) during a power failure.

And the result is a "voip" phone much like Vonnage, Nettalk, or OOMA, but for a LOT more $$$.

And the reliability/calls completed (especially incoming) SUCKS.

jocco, would you still define that as a "landline"?

The one thing with a land line is when the cell towers are down, most of the time the land line still works.

I actually maintain 9-1-1 systems for a living. True, "WRLS" or Phase 1 has to be triangulated by cell towers and can narrow a caller down within a few football fields, which is ok in rural areas, worthless in urban areas, and there are still tons of "WRLS" out there. "WPH2", or Phase 2 can get you within a city block, which is better in both rural and urban areas, but leaves a lot to be desired. There are no regulations stipulating Phase 3, or what is referred to as Next Gen that can in theory narrow you down to about 10 feet and do video as they can and do in Europe. First and foremost, there are a ton of rural PSAPs (Public Safety Access Points), or 9-1-1 centers across America that can't even do Phase 2 wireless, and there are no federal laws stipulating that they have to. Laws regulating 9-1-1 calls differ from state to state. In a lot of cases, instead of giving the proper ANI (Automatic Number Identifier)...telephone number of the cell phone, the PANI (Pseudo Automatic Number Identifier) of the cell tower shows up on the 9-1-1 dispatcher screen with an improper ALI (Automatic Location Identification)...physical address, which is often the physical location of the cell tower that the 9-1-1 call is bouncing off of, and its highly possible to be in one county while your cell phone is using the services of a cell tower in another county, and the PANI of the cell tower can't be called back because although cell towers pass cell calls, they don't answer or receive them. Happens all of the time.

VOIP phones are much worse. You know how in theory you can unplug your VOIP phone from your home and take it with you on vacation, wherever that may be, plug it into the network (computer) jack at your hotel, or wherever and get your phone calls? Yes Sir, you sure can because when you plug your VOIP set in, it races across the internet to register with your provider. Try dialing 9-1-1 sometime while doing so. The 9-1-1 call will register back to your residence because that's where your billing records are from. So while you're lying on the floor having a heart attack in a hotel in one state, your local PSAP of the state that you live in gets your 9-1-1 call. It happens. I've pulled the 9-1-1 call records for PSAPs because the family of the dead guy in Florida filed a FOIA (Freedom Of Information Act) request in hopes of filing a wrongful death lawsuit because the fire department in his home state about six states over didn't respond properly to his 9-1-1 call from his vacation hotel room. It gets even better than that. For some reasons, VOIP telephone service companies aren't held to the same standards as local operating telephone companies (the land line guys). True, they are getting better, but many of them still don't provide ALI to the PSAPs, and don't even route their calls over 9-1-1 (CAMA) trunks to provide ALI. Some of them that I can name, but won't here simply route emergency (9-1-1) calls to the main number of local police departments that may have a receptionist (possibly automated attendant) that may or may not even have Called ID to see an ANI, but certainly no ALI, and that receptionist desk may be manned from 8:00 AM until 5:00 PM Monday through Friday, but not from 5:00 PM to 8:00 AM Monday through Friday, or at all on weekends or holidays. It happens.

Cell phones or VOIP service required to be as accurate as land lines are currently? From someone that maintains 9-1-1 PSAPs, closer in some cases, but not even close in many more.

Mark

Yep, land lines are obsolete and will be gone in a few years just like the radio was after tv came along. Ain't gonna happen in our lifetime.

Most all rural cell service goes through a land line to complete a call unless it is a local cell to cell call.

We switched to VOIP phone a few years ago but still have the landline to receive our DSL.

If ever a time comes that I can get better service, we'll go all wireless. My verizon wireless modem I have for work provides faster internet speed than our alleged high speed DSL from the landline.

If that doesn't materialize I can see switching internet service to dish if the cost isn't prohibitive. I'm thankful there are options available even in a rural area like I live in.

This is true, however with modern technology, a PSAP with E911 can lat/long a call from a cell phone tower, and pinpoint your location within 20 feet. Amazing technology.
I still prefer the landline phone when at home. At least there is a dial tone, which lets you slam a phone down on the telemarketers.

Everyone needs to read Marks post about 911 cell voip calls not working all the time.On one farm,a cell call can go to any of 3 countys 911 centers or nowhere. A year or so ago our county had 5 or 6 deaths due to Voips or Magic Jacks not showing anything up.

I and a lot of folks I know dropped land lines years ago. We just rehabbed a house and didn't bother to run phone lines in side the house. Every thing is going wireless.

In my part of the world landline phone is by far the best way to get good unlimited Internet high speed service. The phone co actually did a whole lot of upgrades and fiber optic to the far reaches of their network, and can get 5-7 meg service most places to get both Internet and TV service over the landline.

Cable ends at the city limits 5-20 miles away from most farmers around here.

Any other Internet gets wobbly in poor weather, and has strong data limits. While I see many towers on a clear night, there are many dead spots in these rolling hills and river valleys. Very uneven cell coverage. And data limits......

Don't know how folks get Internet without a landline, that is how it works here.

Paul

I'm in trouble if they do away with land lines....I have a $15 cell phone thats just for emergency use when I travel alone...Its rarely ever turned on..

All I want to know is, who is going to PAY to keep the landlines running when all that's left are a handful of extremely remote customers who have no other options?

Rural customers pay the same as urban customers, yet the cost to bring service to a single rural customer is many many times what it costs in the city, due to the distances.

In a city, you would have dozens or hundreds of customers in a single building. Suburbs would have 100-200 customers per mile. Out in the rural areas, you can have miles and miles between customers.

The landline customer base is shrinking. The price is not rising proportionately for the remaining customers, to what it would cost to properly maintain the system. Something has to give.

Sooner or later you're going to have three choices:

1. Lose landline service.
2. Pay more, a LOT more to keep it.
3. Demand that the government pay to maintain the landlines.

We no longer have copper wire land line. We are fiber optic now. They ran the fiber lines right at the end of my drive 3 years ago. But the route of our line went past us, down a gravel road to a dirt road. Then it went to copper to one other house and us. When it failed this spring they determined that the underground line was bad somewhere in a 1/4 mile run. So they ran fiber from the end of my drive. Goofy, they should have just run the fiver when they had the equipment out here the first time. manager at the phone company (I know the guy) was pretty upset about the whole thing. He can't figure out why I wasn't on fiber 3 years ago. The land line companies are doing it to themselves. As far as cell service goes it's hit and miss in our area. Hills and trees are the big problem. So yea the phone is going to hang on the wall for the time being.

Rick

I just got off the phone with Century Link about getting phone service to my new house. There is an old line from the 70's that goes to the house site but there is a break so many feet down the line. So they want to run a new line from the nearest active line, about 3/4 of a mile. They will only run lines for 700 feet, anything over that you pay for. I contacted them in August but they stalled around until now when the ground is frozen. They want $3700 plus a $300 fee to run a temporary line! Checking on internet services now but looks like I'll be going cell phone only.

Land lines won't go away any time soon. Most rural are doing overbuilt to (FTTH Fiber to the home)and at the minimum Fiber in the loop to cabinets and copper out from there to allow for DSL. The cost of fiber has come down enough that it is more practical to use fiber than copper as it will not degrade. With FTTH you can get land line, television, and interenet on one line without any slowdown. I work for a telecommunications consulting and engineering company. I have all thee services and it is cheaper than dish network. and I also work from home.

DSL in copper feed from a cabinet that is feed with fiber in the loop. Or straight copper with enough loading to keep the signal and speed fast enough. Work for a telecommunications engineering company.

FCC regulation killed off the phone companies years ago. If they put in new plant, they have to let their competitors used it at a 40% discount. When that rule passed, all phone companies quit investing in copper plant.

Verizon sold off all the non profit rural areas sometime back to a company the later went broke. Rural areas have always cost more money than they paid. The OLD phone companies were set up under a monopoly to make a profit over 40 years. This 40 year payback does not work when you have to let your competitors come in and use your cable at a loss.

Landlines have slowly decreased to less than 50% of what they were at the peak. So phone companies have slowly laid off employees to keep cost down and stay profitable on the "landline" side of the business. If it were not for other business, like data, private lines, and cellular, they would have shut down years ago. So yes, there are less and less employees to repair you line or put in new copper.

Phone companies dont have to let competitor use its fiber or digital plant so they only invest in those areas. So new buildings and subdivisions are served off fiber only, or a combination of fiber from the central office and then copper for the last mile.

Before you get in a uproar...do you buy a house a let your neighbors live in it for less than the cost? Do you buy tractors and let your neighbors use it for the price of fuel only? Do you let anyone come plant your field and take the crops off for 10 cents an acre?

It seems that companies dont continue to do business when they are losing money. And that is exactly why they are getting the laws changed. It seems that in America, You cant legally force a company to loose money.

Therefore the landline business will slowly die off to a fiber/cellular model. Yes it will take years but will happen. Someday when you landline goes out, they will show up with a cellular modem and plug your old phone into it. Its already happening.

Becareful on the internet "net nuetrality" issue as if the fcc regulates that, you will not see it continue to grow as it has. Most folks have no clue about the real issues and think its about blocking packets, when infact its totally different. That why even the FCC when they finally look at the facts, realize if they pass the law, the block all growth and improvements by private companies. In spite of what google says, google want to stop any and all competition and corner the market and harvest your privacy info. They were the ones who started the incorrect and totally false rumors about qos, video and voice services being overlaid on the internet in real time services. If these new intelligent net is built, you will then no longer need the catv company as the internet will have the intelligence to handle real time packets vrs pure data packets. This medthod is already install in ALL private networks and overseas. Google will not longer have a chance the look at all your packets and see what ads to sell you.

(quoted from post at 12:45:21 12/05/14) DSL in copper feed from a cabinet that is feed with fiber in the loop. Or straight copper with enough loading to keep the signal and speed fast enough. Work for a telecommunications engineering company.

Click to expand...

s DSL still limited to 15,000 feet on copper?

What will happen to this area????

"Within a 13,000 square-mile area in West Virginia and Virginia, cell phone transmissions, Wi-Fi, and even microwave ovens are restricted – by law. This is the National Radio Quiet Zone, established in 1958 to protect the National Radio Astronomy Observatory at Green Bank, West Virginia, from harmful interference."
Quiet Zone

I'm in a rural area where the only reliable phone service is a landline. The nearest cell tower is about 6.5 miles away and serves all of the downtown. I cannot use VoIP, because my ONLY option for high-speed internet is satellite and it just doesn't have the bandwidth OR the usage quotas to permit internet-based phone. We don't have cable television available, and Charter has no plans to install it any time soon. Even DSL (which would use the landline, anyway) isn't available -- AT&T says all ports full and they're not investing in any new equipment.

So, although I'm not much of a fan of the landline, I worry about what will happen in the future when AT&T decides that rural customers aren't worth the trouble.

20 +/- years, I think will be the death nail for landlines. I have an Aunt, & 2 cousins that all live in separate homes on the same farm. 10 years ago all 3 had landlines. Now only 1 (the 87 year old Aunt) has the landline. I cut mine 7 years ago. Hated to but... cant justify paying 35$ with no long distance included per month. My current cell phone bill is $37.45 tax included for Unlimited talk with HS internet which I don't even use , & of course free long distance!

I rarely take the phone with me. It is the home phone! I Don't think its left the house since the 2nd week of September, & went to Florida for a week then!

Where I am, people further out than me can't get a good cell signal even with boosters, so they have a landline. DSL works up to 8 miles from the village, so that's about 7 miles away from me, everyone closer than that has DSL, which requires the mandatory landline ($35 for local calls included only, $50 for DSL= $85 for 1 meg DSL). The village has a locally owned phone company, they upgraded one direction out of town to fiber optic, but aren't doing the rest of us. 8 years ago they said they were going to do it in 5 years, this summer they said they were going to do it in 5 years. The cellular Internet I have is cheaper and faster, and I can live with the 100 GB cap. Also the Straight Talk home phone device is about $16 per month for unlimited calls, so the landline is gone, couldn't get any Internet from them anyway. Several of the neighboring villages are part of a bigger operation, many of them ran fiber optic to most rural customers, 20+ miles from town in some cases. They have bundles with a cable tv type thing included in some of them. So if they are putting in stuff like that now, I doubt landlines will die soon around here. Unless the upcoming low orbit satellite networks do what they could.