In a rather bold statement, the CEO of Verizon Communications basically said that the company simply doesn’t care about landline anymore.
The statement may be bold but I think we all knew in the back of our minds this was coming. Generally speaking, the only reason anybody has a landline phone today is either because a) it’s required in order to use DSL internet service, b) cell phone reception is not available for whatever reason or c) the internet connection is too slow to handle broadband VoIP properly.
If I asked how many of you out there use your wireless phone as your primary phone, chances are the majority of you would say, "I do!"
If I asked how many of you do have a landline, but it’s through your cable company and not the local Telco, chances are also good the majority of you would say, "I do!" (And in fact I’m one of them.)
Why do so many choose wireless and/or cable over Telco?
The first answer is cost.
For basic communications, a prepaid cell phone is cheaper than a POTS landline.
For business-grade phone service, VoIP offerings from your local cable company or broadband make it super-easy to setup. It also costs less and in many instances can have same-day setup.
The second answer is features.
On a basic POTS line you get absolutely nothing in the way of features – not even Caller ID. With the absolute cheapest prepaid cell phone you can buy you can at least see the incoming number of who is calling you. You also get 3-way calling, voicemail and texting besides that.
You will spend $25 a month (not including tax) in most places for a featureless POTS line. If you were to go with Vonage, that same $25 a month gets you unlimited calling anywhere. And I mean anywhere; it includes international calling to over 60 countries with no additional cost to you.
The third answer is value.
Who in their right mind would go with a POTS landline when you can get so much more stuff with wireless or VoIP that’s actually useful for the same price?
At this point the only thing keeping POTS around is the fact that broadband and wireless isn’t available everywhere in the US. In fact there is a study going on right now being paid for by the US government in an attempt to find out what our broadband reach is – because to be honest nobody knows the true answer to that at present.
Do you agree with the Verizon Communications CEO? Is it time to put old-style landline out to pasture?
At the risk of insulting my wife’s sons — both of whom work for Qwest — I believe POTS is a dying technology. Verizon, it seems, is indeed seeing the light and moving on with newer technology. I can tell you the Qwest will cling madly to all their copper wire. Their management is just not visionary enough to see more than 10 minutes into the future. They passed up the opportunity to be a big player in wireless several years ago, and it almost killed the company. And probably should have! Yes, POTS still has a place in our society, but as technology improves and people get more used to cell technology, the land line will disappear. BUT – we seem to be rejecting having our cell phone numbers published in any directory!! If businesses are to survive AND use cell technology, a cell phone directory of some description will be mandatory. How do we accomplish this? Online! Thru the phone itself. Interesting age in which we live, eh?
Hmm. ‘Not sure about what goes on in the USA, but in the UK we do have free caller ID and free voicemail on our landline phones over here.
Personally I have 2 landline lines; 1 of which comes with my cable TV service from Virgin Media; which I use for business, the other is a necessity with my BT Broadband package that brings my internet over the UK copper-wire telephone network, which I use for anything else. (I have thought of solely using Virgin Media for internet, landline phone, mobile phone, etc – Also changing to the Utility Warehouse, who would also supply my electricity/gas; but I am currently resistant to change.)
There’s also BT’s VOIP phone via the BT Home Hub router; but it’s hardly cheap for a VOIP phone, and I rarely use it if at all.
I have 2 mobile phones: 1 with Vodafone on their GSM 900 service (That’s not a commonly-used-name for it; I’m being technical by referring to the frequency-band it uses) – which has generally better UK coverage, and also allows me to tweet to Twitter on it, and a regularly-used contract-phone via 3 network with their GSM 1800 service.(Again referring to the frequency-band used) (I believe the USA uses GSM 1900, among others. There is, currently, no GSM 1900 service in the UK AFAIK. (I used to sell mobile phones too.))
Whilst I use both landline and mobile phones to a certain extent; I think that the UK landline service is still very useful and very much used.
In the USA, the situation is obviously quite different. It appears that the landline phone service there is, basically, crap. If this is the case, and it is therefore being used less and less over time; I see the CEO’s decision as a logical practical one in the light of current events. – However I do think that even though it may be the case that US landline communications are diminishing in the light of progress, there will nevertheless always be some requirement for them. – Therefore I do hope that the at least one company in the US keeps their interest in landline communications alive.
We were just waiting for FIOS. It is now here and we are planning to switch soon. (Disclaimer: my wife is a Verizon employee.)
Before going completely wireless, please consider whether you will be covered in an emergency.
Wireless phones are not as reliable as POTS; in particular they are much more likely to suffer from network congestion. [As happened in London on July 7 2005]
On the flip side, landline phones are completely useless if the emergency includes no electricity, as most phones these days require an AC outlet to plug the adapter into. The same can be said of VoIP – if electricity goes out, you’ve got nothing.
Personally, I’d rather take my chances w/ network congestion. While I can recall experiencing congestion and bad coverage while living in the US for the last 2 yrs, I can’t recall ever having congestion issues back here in Australia.
Every country is different I guess…
I believe a POTS line carries 6 watts of electricity, so a phone can operate even with a loss of power. However yes, you need a standard non-powered corded handset to take advantage of that.
Basic land line phones are powered by the line. The telephone central office power is REALLY reliable. Batteries charged by redundant rectifiers backed up by a regularly tested generator. There are CO’s whose equipment has never been down due to power. (I did a stint as DC power engineer for a major carrier. The standards are incredible.)
POTS is reliable–probably three MAGNITUDES more reliable than VOIP. But the reality is that people don’t care about quality. People want phone service to be as cheap as possible and still basically function.
You do realize that in a broad enough power outage, cell phones are also useless. When there’s no power at the tower, the cell phone is a brick. This happened a few years ago here, when an ice storm knocked out a lot of power…people were surprised that their cell phones didn’t work. This is to say nothing of the need to have charged batteries.
Landline phones beat any other type in terms of reliability and call quality. As such, it will remain my primary line.
i have to say yes and no. No because i have relatives who live in the country were broadband isnt their yet but their is always satalite internet though and yes because everything will go obsolete eventually and my opinion landline went that away. Once broadband & wireless fixes the coverage problem then a definant yes landline has been around since the late 1800s its time for a change
skype cannot call emergency services, which is why its sometimes still good to haev a landline.
We do not have a landline but if we wanted the security system activated in our apt than we would have to have a landline. When we first moved to SC the local cable company didn’t provide telephone service in our area. My wfie told me a few days ago they now provide service in our area. We don’t know if we will get it but we wouldn’t use it very often, if at all.
Anyone wanting to get switched over to our landline service or indeed have a new line installed we guarantee to beat BT. We have also had 2 entries in Which? this year and got BEST BUY for broadband (up to 24mps) and call bundle and BEST ENERGY provider. And it all comes on one bill AND you can get cashback from shopping at about 30 major outlets including Sainsbuy’s, Argos, New Look etc I got £53 off my utility bill this month and no other company can do all that. Gice us a try.
Mr Utility
My wife pays 13 cents per minute to speak to relatives in Romania using Vonage You cant get that rate with any cell phone. It’s not even close.
I think POTS are on the way out. You can cry reliability all day long but people are on the move a lot more nowadays and cell phones are the only way to stay in touch. All my friends (and the younger relatives) have cell phones. With the exception of one or two, none use land lines anymore. Simply because very few see the point of paying for a service they hardly ever use.
I use a Straight Talk prepaid phone which costs me 45 bucks a month for unlimited calling and texting. I don’t need anything else. I refuse to pay for anything else.
The Pots lines here in SW Mo. where I live are not as good as the Wireless or the Cable with Vonage.
When it rains in the town where I live the Pots lines become so bad that you cannot talk.
With the wireless it is fine, and also with Vonage.
With the old POTS my phone bill was over or close to 100 usd a month, I have never ever even come close to that with Vonage ,and I call all over the world to friends and family.
I think they need to pull up all the miles and miles of copper and put it to a better use.
As the cost of the land line phone has become just to costly . And it is not anymore reliable than the wireless or the cable / Vonage phone or phones of that type.
The land line phone company’s lagged behind on the new tech as they thought that they owned the phone service, even there DSL is out of date and is like having the Modem of old to use for the internet.
As it is now most of the land line customers are in the farm areas where they cannot got cable. But the wire less customers are getting wireless internet from there cell service in the farm areas as the phone company of old have not even got internet DSL out of just a few miles of the towns.
They waited to long and now they are so far behind that if they do not come up with something that is earth shaking they are going to be gone as we know them in the near future.
With the land line phone it cost 15 cents or more a minute to call anywhere but the local town, the world has passed them by and they tried to use the law to keep the new tech out. Well it did not work.
You make a very good point about the DSL. The way it’s designed to work is that if you’re within 15,000 feet (2.8 miles) of a DSLAM, you’re supposed to be able to achieve 1.5 Mbits/s if your access plan has it available. This is nothing more than a pipe dream for many areas because of the seriously shoddy equipment used by the local Telco.
I remember back in 2004 when the hurricanes slammed through Florida, the cell tower Telco’s turned off the towers to all but emergency services due to the influx of call volume. I think it was off for about 2 days or more. I could barely make any calls and I had to switch the phone over manually to analog roam to do that. POTS has it’s place like during an emergency, but cell service will rule eventually. I just hope they have an emergency plan in place that doesn’t involve cutting off regular users service like before. That really sucked back then.
We live in central massachusetts. During the 100 year ice storm last December and power was out for 2 weeks we still had telephone through landline Verizon. Granted all our digital and powered answering machines were non-operational., my old rotary phone still allowed us to communicate with outside. In the event of major catastrophe i.e. hurricane, tornado, ICE storm, terrorist attack or whatever. you might still have connection. Also through landline/dialup iwas also still on the net with a laptop. So landlines are still needed.