Posted on 03/03/2014 10:30:55 AM PST by chessplayer
The Walker County town of Carbon Hill has been selected by AT&T for a national technology trial that will help the telecommunications giant determine the best way to move all of its customers to internet-based phone services and away from traditional copper-wire landlines.
(Excerpt) Read more at al.com ...
I can transfer my old land line number to a cell phone?
Are you using “globalstar-sat-fi” now? Or another similar sat/wifi provider?
Yes the FCC rules require it if it is a working number at the time of request.
Thanks, Dan. I will definitely look into that before I shut down the land line. Both are ATT so it shouldn’t present any problems.
During and after hurricanes Ike and Katrina, the only way to communicate with the outside world in some areas was by shortwave.
ATT U-Verse land lines don’t work if the power is off the router.
Understand. The ‘phone company’ loses money (sans business subsidy) on every 1FR, particularly on those WAAAAYYY out there in the boonies. This’ll help cut losses. (Improve your dividend)
Central America is 98% wireless outside cities ‘cuz it’s so much cheaper to deploy and maintain an wireless network.
... and hacker's wet dreams
There are two entities that require the use of a land-line: Business and the medical establishment.
Although I would like to rid the requirement to have a land-line in my business, I have to have it because there are many backward businesses who send purchase orders to me via fax...an outdated device that wastes time and prints crappy unreadable purchase orders. The other is the medical establishment who still requires faxes to correspond business.
Other than that, the world would be rid of land-lines a few years ago.
The ‘phone company’ is a huge threat surface across its network.
While they don’t publish complete stats, the number of and vectors of threats/attcks/spoofs/etc is stupifyingly large. And they beat them all.
Arguably, nothing gets into the ‘phone company’ unless they let it in ... or out.
According to the webpage where the picture is hosted:
BEFORE THE RIOT version 1 - The Vancouver Canucks Fan Zone along Georgia St. for Game 7 of the 2011 Stanley Cup Final was captured at 5:46 pm on June 15, 2011. It is made up of 216 photos (12 across by 18 down) stitched together, taken over a 15-minute span, and is not supposed to represent a single moment in time. The final hi-res file is 69,394 X 30,420 pixels or 2,110 megapixels. Special thanks to Bonita Howard and CBC Real Estate. |
No
I don’t think that is an option presently - having a land line and a cell phone with the same phone number. You might be able to forward your calls from your cell to your land line and perhaps depending on your landline service – visa versa. You can in theory have two cell phones with the same phone number but that requires physically transferring the SIM card (assuming you are using phones that still use SIM cards) from one phone to the other and shutting off the phone not in use and they would also have to be both be with the same carrier. I don’t think it is possible to have a land line and a cell phone with the same number operating simultaneously.
I do know that were I work, a manufacturing plant, we just started weekly rotations of being on call for our maintenance staff. And we got a new cell phone and new number especially for that purpose – that way if there was an plant emergency or a machine breakdown, there would only be one number to call rather than having to look up to see who was on call that week.
The problem with that is that this requires a physical hand off of that phone to the next person on call which depending on what normal shift and building they are assigned to and where they live, could mean passing it off at midnight on a Sunday or Saturday, not exactly practical especially since we have 3 plants, one several miles away from the other two. Our IT department was asked to find out if we could have a second cell phone with the same phone number and the answer from our provider was no – that’s not possible and I don’t think it had anything to do with 9-11 service. Last I heard the game plan was to have a primary cell phone and number to call and a secondary phone to which the prior person on call person would be responsible to set up to automatically forward their calls to the other phone and phone number once their rotation ended and that next person transferring calls back to the first phone once their rotation ended.
As far as dialing 9-11 from a cell phone, you can do that now, you just need to be sure first off to tell the operator you are calling from a cell phone and give your current location. Of course that might not help in a medical emergency or other type of emergency where you are able to dial 9-11 but not necessarily able to speak, but truthfully, how often does that happen?
There are improvements being made however to locate 9-11 calls from cell phones.
http://www.fcc.gov/guides/wireless-911-services
To be honest, I ditched my land line 10 years ago and I’ve had no problems or regrets over doing so. All I ever seemed to get on my land line were telemarketing calls (even being on the Do Not Call list, although it did cut it down) and wrong numbers. The only time in those 10 years that I dialed 9-11 was when I was on the road, rural road and witnessed a serious car accident and called from my cell phone.
And when I had a conventional land line cordless phone, when the power went off, so did my phone. And now when my power goes out, I lose my cable and my internet but my cell phone still works. Worse comes to worse, I can charge my phone in my car and even can charge from my laptop via a USB cable as long as my laptop still has battery life.
Question: How does this affect typical home security systems that call in via the phone line to report an alarm?
My cell phone still works when I have a power outage.
My cell phone works just fine during power outages also. I worked fine during the last big ice storm we had here in central PA even during my 18+ hour power outage but I had no internet as my cable modem doesn’t work without power.
The problem with cell phones (and land lines as well during a major disaster even if the power is still on) is that the systems quickly become overloaded.
I lived and worked in Baltimore on 9/11 and even though there were no power outages, it was very difficult to get a dial tone and or make any calls on anywhere on the East Coast. It was also very difficult to connect cell phone calls or once connected, calls would drop. I also experienced internet slowdowns and intermittent outages that day too. I remember it well as I was finalizing my company’s payroll that Tuesday and had to work with ADP to re-route our normal wire transfer to another bank as the bank we normally dealt with was in lower Manhattan.
I was also living in Baltimore during the blizzard of ‘83¸which had not been forecasted and caught pretty much everyone by surprise. I kept picking up the phone, attempting to call my main office to get permission to close my store early and all I got was either no dial tone or that dial tone that indicated that all circuits were busy.
Many thanks for the detailed info..
Can I keep my digital(pulse) dialing?
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