[SBE] Verizon says it will do away with traditional phone, lines in 7 years

[Bill Whitt]

Well all I got to say - That FIOS fiber kicks the pants off the Charter
Bundle I have at the house - for about $20.00 dollars cheaper. A 20 meg up
and down - WOW - I'll be lucky to get 5 down on a 6 meg service - during a
busy time of day,( I use the internet speed tests a lot). Because of this I
don't even bother with the HDTV . that would crowd me out completely I fear.

 

I have been an internet phone guy now for about 5 years. I haven't had a
landline in the house since I switched. I have family in Hawaii, Phoenix,
and Massachusetts. I love that one month flat fee, and my brother and I can
talk for 4 hours with no worries of long distance charges. 

 

When we ran into power issues with the grid going down out here this winter.
The cell phone never had a hiccup. I may have a total of 4 outages a year
where I am living, and usually they are more than 12 hours a piece.

 

Overall - I think this is a pretty good idea and I wish I had the
opportunity to switch. Maybe here in the future they may come into our area.

 

Bill Whitt

 

From: sbe-bounces at sbe.org [mailto:sbe-bounces at sbe.org] On Behalf Of Andy
Funk
Sent: Monday, January 12, 2009 6:14 PM
To: sbe at sbe.org
Subject: Re: [SBE] Verizon says it will do away with traditional phone,
lines in 7 years

 

Verizon has already done away with maintenance of their copper, POTS
infrastructure -- at least where I am.

For over five years, my dad has had trouble with the phone line at his house
every time it rains more than a sprinkle.  Verizon told him there were no
good, spare pairs in the trunk cable to the neighborhood, they weren't
installing replacement copper, and there was nothing he could do about it.
After moving in with my dad a couple of months ago, this became the
situation for me, too.  Our options:  live with it, or switch to FIOS fiber
to the home.

Well, the Cablevision HDTV here is so bandwidth compressed that I already
was planning to switch us to FIOS for video, so we ended up going with FIOS
for phone and internet as well.  The services are good, but I'm old-school
-- I want my phone service power to be backed-up fully by the telco central
office's batteries.  That's one reason I won't depend on my cell phone at
home.  While FIOS has its own battery back-up system for the phone service,
it's good for 8-12 hours, so I'll be installing a UPS ahead of the FIOS
power connection.




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