Steven Hirsch<snhirsch@gmail.com> wrote:
On 11/27/2012 10:48 AM, David Schmidt wrote:
On 11/27/2012 10:14 AM, Egan Ford wrote:
On 11/26/12 11:21 PM, Kevin wrote:
we don't even have land lines
I've still got one. How else am I going to use my acoustic coupler or
fax machine? :-)
Ditto. It's the _only_ system in my house (or anywhere I've experienced,
really) with five nines of uptime.
Now that I've had a few years of cell phone ownership under my belt (I
was a die-hard holdout), there's not a chance I'd leave myself without
copper-wire service and at least one corded phone.
In terms of reliability, POTS is to cell service as an IBM Z-Series
mainframe is to a store-bought PeeCee.
Interesting. I've never experienced cellphone unreliability distinct from
"bad locations", which my home isn't--therefore no reliability deficit
relative to land line.
In fact, in some disaster situations, cell towers (and their intrinsic
redundancy) fare better than wires.
I do have land lines, but one of them is a VOIP phone, and it *is* less
reliable than the POTS line.
All my phones are wireless handsets, with UPS on the base stations, good
for several hours without power.
I think that land lines are a generational thing. As age goes down, the
fraction of cellphone-only users goes up dramatically.