Bye bye cable

[Kara Spengler]

Finally disconnected my cable and land line. In their place are my cell phones and youtube tv.

In this age of streaming why do cable companies rely on cable tv and phonelines for so much of their business? Even after adding youtube tv I am still saving almost a hundred a month.

 

[Kalel]

Finally disconnected my cable and land line. In their place are my cell phones and youtube tv.

In this age of streaming why do cable companies rely on cable tv and phonelines for so much of their business? Even after adding youtube tv I am still saving almost a hundred a month.

i blame boomers. got my mom to use pluto tv and have a sling account just incase.

She insist on keeping a landline for Emergency hurricane preparations... last storm i tried plugging it in... nothing..

do you want to know how many times since January i had to explain how to operate an amazon stick to my mom?

My dad finally figured out netflix and has been on an endless quarantine binge... Currently re-watching old school charmed and star trek.

 

[bubblesort]

She insist on keeping a landline for Emergency hurricane preparations... last storm i tried plugging it in... nothing..

do you want to know how many times since January i had to explain how to operate an amazon stick to my mom?

The phone lines have their own power, so they can work in a power blackout... if they aren't severed by something like a hurricane. It is a bit of redundancy, since two systems have to be severed to totally cut you off from the grid. If the phone line is fibre, like FiOS, they definitely totally go out when power cuts off. If you want resiliency, you need a copper loop. It's not a horrible idea to keep one around, but it's not necessarily as helpful as many people think. Personally, if I lived in hurricane country, I'd set up a small power generator to run my old HAM radio off of and cancel the copper wire.

 

[Kara Spengler]

The phone lines have their own power, so they can work in a power blackout... if they aren't severed by something like a hurricane. It is a bit of redundancy, since two systems have to be severed to totally cut you off from the grid. If the phone line is fibre, like FiOS, they definitely totally go out when power cuts off. If you want resiliency, you need a copper loop. It's not a horrible idea to keep one around, but it's not necessarily as helpful as many people think. Personally, if I lived in hurricane country, I'd set up a small power generator to run my old HAM radio off of and cancel the copper wire.

They are getting rid of that though. When they phase out your analog phone signal you are just splitting off the coax. That was the sole reason I saw as a reason to keep a landline but when it went digital that reason became pointless.

 

[Caete]

The phone lines have their own power, so they can work in a power blackout... if they aren't severed by something like a hurricane. It is a bit of redundancy, since two systems have to be severed to totally cut you off from the grid. If the phone line is fibre, like FiOS, they definitely totally go out when power cuts off. If you want resiliency, you need a copper loop. It's not a horrible idea to keep one around, but it's not necessarily as helpful as many people think. Personally, if I lived in hurricane country, I'd set up a small power generator to run my old HAM radio off of and cancel the copper wire.

With COWs (Cellsite On Wheels) a company can get comms back up as soon as they can get into the area. Cell Sites also have their own back up generators (at least ours did) however, they do have to be refueled at some point. As for HAM radio, gotta watch out for HOA as they get bent out of shape and threaten legal action for your mailbox leaning 2 degrees off... Just imagine the result of setting up a mast that was visible from the front...

 

[Kara Spengler]

i blame boomers. got my mom to use pluto tv and have a sling account just incase.

She insist on keeping a landline for Emergency hurricane preparations... last storm i tried plugging it in... nothing..

do you want to know how many times since January i had to explain how to operate an amazon stick to my mom?

My dad finally figured out netflix and has been on an endless quarantine binge... Currently re-watching old school charmed and star trek.

I am the family tech. It is even more fun because now I have to talk people through things remotely without skipping the most minor step, like letting go of a mouse button.

Recently it was getting someone to open a url in a browser other than their default one. By the end I probably had a 'kill me now' look on my face.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

My dad finally figured out netflix and has been on an endless quarantine binge... Currently re-watching old school charmed and star trek.

Now that's cute!

 

[Maggy Hazelnut]

Stop dissing us Boomers! lol You're gonna be old some day too & by then the odds are there'll be some new tech stuff out that'll glaze your eyes over too. I use a landline cause where I live cell phones are very unreliable. Most don't work at all out here. Some work if you stand on one spot on your back porch till you get a signal & then don't move or it goes away. Everyone I know that lives out here is complaining about cellphone coverage & how often it goes out. The yak herders in Outer Mongolia get better cell reception than this area does. My landline phone might be limited but at least the damn thing works 99% of the time & I don't have to stand on my porch to talk on the phone. It works even if the power goes out. I don't have a smart phone & because of that I'd have no idea how to even turn one of the damn things on. I've never texted or tweeted in my life! lol

No cable tv out here but most of us use Dish or Direct tv. I'm on Dish (one of their cheap packages) but I also use Netflix & various free internet sites to watch most of the things I want to watch. Speaking of internet - we have one choice - Frontier. Unless you want to count a craptastic satellite dish internet (Wild Blue) that's absolutely horrible. You cap out quickly if you use it for much besides checking email & it goes completely out every time it snows or rains heavily (this is rain country). Don't even think about putting up an antenna for tv watching cause we're surrounded by mountains & too far from a city for one to get a signal.

As you can see the choices are limited & this isn't the only area of the country or world that has limited choices. Luckily I hate talking on the phone so rarely use my landline except in emergencies or to call to make an appointment. I could live just fine if I decided to cancel my Dish. I'd be perfectly happy with just my computer & my Kindles (2 Paperwhites & 2 Fires).

 

[Kalel]

The phone lines have their own power, so they can work in a power blackout... if they aren't severed by something like a hurricane. It is a bit of redundancy, since two systems have to be severed to totally cut you off from the grid. If the phone line is fibre, like FiOS, they definitely totally go out when power cuts off. If you want resiliency, you need a copper loop. It's not a horrible idea to keep one around, but it's not necessarily as helpful as many people think. Personally, if I lived in hurricane country, I'd set up a small power generator to run my old HAM radio off of and cancel the copper wire.

They replaced the lines to fiber about 2-3 years ago... i remember there being a big promotion deal going on. Your only choice in this area for are ATT and comcast and i'm pretty sure FiOs is the only way for residents now... everything else is out of typical price range.. During Irma the power went out but the gateway had it's own power supply and went on for several more hours..

 

[Aribeth Zelin]

My mom is Silent Generation [barely] and she's been using netflix for years, and prime video...

She now has no cable, and is considering getting rid of her land line, but she's had that number since 80? 81? But she has hulu and disney+ and super fancy smart tvs....

 

[Ann Launay]

Currently re-watching old school charmed and star trek.

I’ve recently been watching old Buffy episodes on Hulu...damn, they put her in some impractical outfits in the early days.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

The biggest advantage of a landline is Enhanced-911; i.e., the 911 operator is able to determine your name and (more importantly) your address if you call 911 but are unable to give that information for whatever reason. This on top of the fact that you're actually calling your own county or city's 911 call center.

Calling 911 on a mobile phone is very, very different. For one thing, when you first dial 911, you're not calling your own community's call center. You're calling a regional center contracted by the service provider, and they don't even know what city you're in until you actually tell them this. You need to tell them what city as well as what kind of service you need so that they can transfer your call to the right place. If you're unable for whatever reason to complete this initial interaction you're SOL quite simply; but if you are able to give them the information and they transfer you to the actual local 911 center, those guys still don't see exactly where you are. The best they can do is send a request to your service provider, who will send them the location of the cell tower your call is being received by. I know it sounds ridiculous, in this day and age where Google is able to use your phone's GPS functionality to determine precisely when and where you're picking your nose and how long you spent doing it, that 911 operators are left largely clueless, but that's the way it is.

There IS an FCC initiative to fix this; but it requires a complicated set of actions by phone OS makers, service providers, and 911 centers and is rolling out unevenly over a timeline of several years. And of course if you're one of those kinds of people who actually cares about privacy and disables your phone's location services that will probably completely disable the whole system so....yeah.

 

[Kalel]

The biggest advantage of a landline is Enhanced-911; i.e., the 911 operator is able to determine your name and (more importantly) your address if you call 911 but are unable to give that information for whatever reason. This on top of the fact that you're actually calling your own county or city's 911 call center.

Calling 911 on a mobile phone is very, very different. For one thing, when you first dial 911, you're not calling your own community's call center. You're calling a regional center contracted by the service provider, and they don't even know what city you're in until you actually tell them this. You need to tell them what city as well as what kind of service you need so that they can transfer your call to the right place. If you're unable for whatever reason to complete this initial interaction you're SOL quite simply; but if you are able to give them the information and they transfer you to the actual local 911 center, those guys still don't see exactly where you are. The best they can do is send a request to your service provider, who will send them the location of the cell tower your call is being received by. I know it sounds ridiculous, in this day and age where Google is able to use your phone's GPS functionality to determine precisely when and where you're picking your nose and how long you spent doing it, that 911 operators are left largely clueless, but that's the way it is.

There IS an FCC initiative to fix this; but it requires a complicated set of actions by phone OS makers, service providers, and 911 centers and is rolling out unevenly over a timeline of several years. And of course if you're one of those kinds of people who actually cares about privacy and disables your phone's location services that will probably completely disable the whole system so....yeah.

you'd think something so important would have priority.. it still amazes me the amount of red tape local governments deal with when it comes to technology and how outdated they are.

They know cable won't be around forever and less people are using landlines then before...

 

[Roxie Marten]

i blame boomers. got my mom to use pluto tv and have a sling account just incase.

She insist on keeping a landline for Emergency hurricane preparations... last storm i tried plugging it in... nothing..

do you want to know how many times since January i had to explain how to operate an amazon stick to my mom?

My dad finally figured out netflix and has been on an endless quarantine binge... Currently re-watching old school charmed and star trek.

This boomer dropped the land line years ago and hates cable with a passion. I have a Amazon Fire stick.

 

[Noodles]

The copper line argument only works so well in modern times. Most of the time these days, your "land line" isn't POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) its VOIP (Voice Over IP). So its not getting remote power on the line.

Not to mention generators as mentioned. With the generator and fuel capacity we have in the building I am in we could run for days without power. It has never happened though here. The generator gets tested, on load, once a month. In the ten years In have been here its only kicked on from an actual power loss twice, and I am pretty sure the Power company was doing work and forgot to tell us both times.

Even if say, a tornado came through and blew the building over, which isn't likely because this place is a fortress in structure, there is a small fleet of Semis the company has that would get deployed in the event of catastrophic failure that could be here and set up in like a day to serve as a temporary center.

The point is, even your VOIP and Cell service has pretty good redundancy.

 

[Essence Lumin]

I thought of reconnecting my landline until they told me they wanted $80 / month. You've got to be kidding.

 

[Kara Spengler]

I thought of reconnecting my landline until they told me they wanted $80 / month. You've got to be kidding.

Yeah, most of the people that call me (on any line) are just as likely to facetime me or send off an email.

 

[Jopsy Pendragon]

I cut my cable like 15 years ago. (technically the roommate that moved out cut it, I never had it).

I get internet through AT&T though, so adding a landline to that is trivial cheap. And handy because despite living in the city sometimes my in-house cell coverage can be dismal.

But it stays unplugged unless having cell problems and am expecting a call.

(my cell is supposed to use wi-fi for voip if it can, but I'm never really sure if it is or not)

 

[Clara D.]

I thought of reconnecting my landline until they told me they wanted $80 / month. You've got to be kidding.

Lolz. That's like three-four months of prepaid cards for me.

 

[Clara D.]

The copper line argument only works so well in modern times. Most of the time these days, your "land line" isn't POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) its VOIP (Voice Over IP). So its not getting remote power on the line.

Not to mention generators as mentioned. With the generator and fuel capacity we have in the building I am in we could run for days without power. It has never happened though here. The generator gets tested, on load, once a month. In the ten years In have been here its only kicked on from an actual power loss twice, and I am pretty sure the Power company was doing work and forgot to tell us both times.

Even if say, a tornado came through and blew the building over, which isn't likely because this place is a fortress in structure, there is a small fleet of Semis the company has that would get deployed in the event of catastrophic failure that could be here and set up in like a day to serve as a temporary center.

The point is, even your VOIP and Cell service has pretty good redundancy.

On a quasi-related note, if one gets phone added to cable internet, they may also want to get the "customer supplied" battery for the modem to keep the phone working during a power outage.