Land lines

[spdrun]

If I never sent or received another text message, I’d be a happy man. I’d love to have an auto-response. “Fn call. Ths lne dsnt recv txts u fn mllnil twttr twt”

Real life > Phone > Texting. Too many people think they can hold conversations via texting, and this is irritating as all hell.

[Hatfield]

I prefer talking on a landline not because of the sound quality, but because of the latency on cell phone connections. That little delay irritates me. I guess I’m too impatient to wait an extra 100 mSec.

[carli]

I wish I could give up my landline but there’s no way. I especially can’t conduct business or talk to elderly relatives on my cell connection because the call inevitably gets dropped at some point during the conversation. We live near a canyon where the coverage is spotty. I guess I could buy one of those signal boosters, but my neighbor has one and he says his calls still get dropped. Having two numbers (and two bills) is a bummer, but I don’t see another way.

[FlyerInHi]

Carli, did you ever try IP telephone like Vonage?
Smart phones now have wifi calling ability.
Try the Magicjack app for free and see if you like the quality.

I drive a lot and I’m always on the phone. I always use an original corded headset. Not Bluetooth.

[ltsddd]

[quote=FlyerInHi]Carli, did you ever try IP telephone like Vonage?
[/quote]

Try Ooma. The device costs less than $100. Only cost after that is the fcc taxes and fees that add up to about $4/mo.

[FlyerInHi]

[quote=spdrun]If I never sent or received another text message, I’d be a happy man. I’d love to have an auto-response. “Fn call. Ths lne dsnt recv txts u fn mllnil twttr twt”

Real life > Phone > Texting. Too many people think they can hold conversations via texting, and this is irritating as all hell.[/quote]

Years before the iphone and before texting became popular in the states, I would travel abroad and buy SIM cards. I told friends who joined me “if you’re too cheap buy a SIM card your might not use, then if we get separated, you take a taxi back to the hotel and check messages. Nobody is babysitting and waiting for one another. Whoever gets lost is responsible for catching up with everybody else.” Needless to say, a SIM card is well worth avoiding the cost of taxi rides back and forth, not counting hours of wasted time.

spd, if you like it the old fashioned way, have at it.

BTW. I support Verizon and the Bells in phasing out landlines when it makes economic sense. No need to maintain a duplicate systems at great costs for a few diehards.

[bearishgurl]

[quote=FlyerInHi] . . . I support Verizon and the Bells in phasing out landlines when it makes economic sense. No need to maintain a duplicate systems at great costs for a few diehards.[/quote]brian, you forgot about fax machines. Many (most?) businesses still use them and I have a dedicated landline for that purpose only.

[FlyerInHi]

You can scan to PDF. Tile companies and law firms do that. It’s cheaper to buy a new scanner than to pay the monthly fees. We need to get on with the world.

BTW businesses can get digital lines that look like POTS. POTS is so anachronistic.

[spdrun]

POTS is also very reliable. As in works w/o trouble 99.999% of the time. By design.

Yeah, you can email. But some customers and businesses still work by fax. Not sure why, but that’s the way the world rolls. If you want their business, you have to roll with it.

You can also get a virtual fax, of course, but that usually involves fees.

[FlyerInHi]

Maintaining a POTS network is like keeping an Oldsmobile going. Makes no sense to make the parts. Start shutting it down beginning in small towns where there aren’t economies of scale.

A POTS business line is about $35. Virtual fax on an ad hoc basis is maybe $15. And more convenient.

[spdrun]

Except you might not want some kloud-krap outside company storing sensitive faxes for you. To provide stable Internet, one needs some sort of wiring to premises. They can provide POTS over that at virtually no cost, doesn’t have to be a traditional twisted pair.

But if ones use a separate channel for POTS vs Internet which gets priority, it does away with any latency or QoS issues that VoIP has. Example: Verizon FiOS. It’s POTS over fiber, not VoIP since voice doesn’t use an IP network.

[carli]

[quote=FlyerInHi]Carli, did you ever try IP telephone like Vonage?
Smart phones now have wifi calling ability.
Try the Magicjack app for free and see if you like the quality.

I drive a lot and I’m always on the phone. I always use an original corded headset. Not Bluetooth.[/quote]

FlyerInHi, I’ve often considered a VoIP phone but last year, we got an incredible bundled deal from Time Warner when we left ATT Uverse. We only pay $103 (including all taxes/fees) for TV, internet and landline. When I asked what it would cost to take out the phone part of the package, Time Warner told me the a la carte price for TV and internet alone would be higher.

We have a very basic TV plan, but don’t want anything more, and we get great internet speed (I just did a speed test and got 43 mbps download speed on my laptop and my husband usually gets over 70 on his iPad). I don’t need the line for a fax as I’ve never had an issue just scanning/emailing, but will keep my landline as long as I have this deal.

Time Warner has been great – much better than AT&T was, and they just went through an upgrade in our area, which significantly increased our internet speed. It’s made a huge difference, especially with several people using it, including teens/college kids streaming stuff all the time.

But it’s one of those things that I’m continually re-assessing, as I know our Time Warner deal won’t last forever, so thanks for the info. I’ll check out Vonage, Magicjack, Ooma, etc again next time around.

[FlyerInHi]

I’m all for POTS over fiber, coax or hybrid Att Uverse type. The old twisted pair network should be shut down to save money.

But really, IP telephone is so good now… Why not fully phase it in and only maintain one network. Customers can still use their POTS at home if they wish. They don’t need to be any the wiser.

[bearishgurl]

[quote=FlyerInHi]You can scan to PDF. Tile companies and law firms do that. It’s cheaper to buy a new scanner than to pay the monthly fees. We need to get on with the world.

BTW businesses can get digital lines that look like POTS. POTS is so anachronistic.[/quote]Um, maybe very large law firms have those $5-35K standalone copy machines which can automatically scan reams at a time but the medium-sized or small firm does not. Fax service is a legal method of service between law firms if they both agree to it in writing early on in the case. Medical and dental offices and all kinds of gubment agencies still use fax all day every day. Yes, even the IRS. In some depts of the IRS, fax or snail mail is the only way to send them anything.

I personally scan items to pdf for e-mail if that is an accepted way of receipt of the party I’m sending it to. But I often have to reduce the size of each pdf prior to e-mailing in order to have the document “fit” into the “free” e-mail services I use online. This could be a 2-5 step process (versus just faxing it) and a lot of businesses (large and small) don’t have a person to scan each document individually (or in a small batch) on garden variety scanners purchased at Office Depot. Then you need conversion and compression software ($100 and up) and someone who understands how to use it. Scanning and e-mailing can take half a day and can be a PITA. Especially if you have a lot of documents or a very large document to send which is on a commercial or government form and was never originated from MS Office software or other WP software. Faxing is easier and faster for the majority of document sending …. especially in bulk.

It’s just not practical in real life with every agency and business one has to deal with to scan and e-mail everything without access to a sophisticated standalone commercial copier/scanner.

[La Jolla Renter]

I ditched my fax machine a year a go. My faxes come strait to my email via voip (ring central). I have a scan snap ix500 on my desk. It scans, saves to hard drive and emails out simultaneously. Amazing how fast it scans. Best $400 I have spent in a long time.

Way better system than a fax machine, even if the phone line for the fax is free.

[Author]

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