Rural Alabama town selected for national AT&T technology trial on ending landline phone service

[Redfairen]

Source: AL.com

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.

AT&T today announced the trial, which also will be conducted in West Delray Beach, Fla. Both selections are proposals by the company that require approval from the Federal Communications Commission; the agency is expected to take up the issue in May.

.......

Initially, customers in Carbon Hill won't see any changes, AT&T said. At first, those with landlines will be asked to switch to internet-based services. Later, in a move that will require regulatory approval, the company would stop offering landline phones to new customers.

During the trial, the company will look at the best way to deal with public safety issues, educate seniors and other matters that may arise from the transition.



Read more: http://www.al.com/business/index.ssf/2014/02/rural_alabama_town_selected_fo.html

[someone else]

1. I dropped land lines years ago.

[rgbecker]

35. How do you get your interent connection...?

Do you have Cable TV?

Have you found your cell service provider reliable and fast enough to stream movies?

Do you watch TV through the internet or over broadcast signal?

I'm wondering because I'm considering my options....Right now they don't include wireless cell service as the signals don't get here from there.

Thanks.

[fizzgig]

62. i don't have a landline

cable internet through comcast, who also provided me with a free converter box for basic cable. between that and netflix, i'm covered.

[rgbecker]

63. So how is Comcast's cable not a landline?

I think Comcast offers phone thru their cable also, right?

I think we are decades away from reliable wireless internet service that would equal broadband via cable (Landline). At&T is just trying to cut out the high cost, low return rural areas and leave them to rot.

Its all about the old TVA arguments from the 30's.

The utilities will always happily wire up everyone in the cities, say they'll take care of everyone equally in order to get their licenses, then try to get out serving the rest of the country.

[Warpy]

2. So what are they going to do about DSL subscribers?

While newer computers have wireless capability, I can't see it being a solution for a lot of the country. This state is very mountainous and wireless just won't work in a lot of areas that do have land lines.

One size fits all usually ends up fitting nobody.

It's very telling that they picked one of the flattest places in the world for their trial.

[CatholicEdHead]

3. DSL does not go out into many rural areas

You need repeaters every so often and the population density is too low. Wireless besides hills has trees as problems. The private sector alone will not pay for the infrastructure upgrade. It will take a rural electrification style government program to make the transition.

[Lasher]

6. DSL is reaching more rural areas now.

There is a distance limitation with copper wire. But a lot of long haul exchange facilities have been converted to digital loop carrier systems that ride fiber, and that architecture is well suited for DSL service to remote areas.

[Warpy]

51. Ranchers up in the high valleys have dialup, mostly

unless they can afford satellite. I have DSL because I'm only a mile and a half from a university in the biggest city in the state. However, we don't have hills here, they're mountains

And yes, any changeover can't be done by industry, alone. It will need government funding, something Obama campaigned for in 2008. We need to upgrade all our infrastructure or another boom will simply not be possible.

[penultimate]

4. When they say getting rid of land lines, they don't mean abandoning

the infrastructure and going wireless. They are referring to delivering dial tone via traditional POTS. They will just deliver the dial tone using VoIP instead. So there will still need to be cabling on the ground, whether it be copper, fiber or strings and cups.

[LiberalArkie]

7. AT&T is really wanting to get rid of the wire and deliver DT via wireless (Cellular)

and do away with DSL and use cellular modems. That way no more CWA out in the field doing cable work. And measured survice instead of unlimited DSL. They already offer home telephones that work on cellular. They may have to settle with VoIP over DSL, but they don't want to.

[penultimate]

11. That seems like it would require a pretty big investment to do that

I also worked on some AT&T projects doing LTE turn-ups and I'm not fully convinced they'd be able to pull it off with the way they do things.

[LiberalArkie]

12. I know they want to get rid of their copper plant. Their engineers have never been able to explain

how they would deliver T-1's and such with no copper.

[csziggy]

13. Only the last quarter mile of my landline is copper

It's fiber optic to a big box on the corner of the road, then copper distribution to the homes within a fairly close distance. That's why I can get broadband and TV over internet. Until they ran fiber optic down the road, we couldn't get decent internet dial up service. Since then, the phone company has doubled the bandwidth every year or two.

On the other hand, I cannot get a cell signal in my house and only one or two bars just outside my house. To get a good cell signal, I have to walk to the top of our hill where I can see the cell tower down the road.

If the telephone company wants to stop delivering a landline to me, they will have to put a cell tower to the east of my house or they will have to provide a booster to pick up the signal from the peak of my roof and relay it into and around my house!

[Piedras]

44. ATT U-Verse wireless dial tone

I changed from an ATT copper wired land line home phone to an ATT wireless U-Verse service last November. I am in California.

My ATT land line without long distance or any extra calling features like caller id, voice mail, etc. cost a little over $32/mo.

MY ATT U-verse home phone now costs $20/mo plus just over $3/mo. in extra fees and taxes. The service includes unlimited US long distance, caller id, voice mail, 3 way calling, and more services I have yet to figure out. The big difference is that it is an ATT wireless service, in actuality an ATT home cell phone dial tone. My understanding is that it is no longer subject to regulation by the California Public Utilities Commission, the PUC, so the taxes are substantially less. I may have fewer consumer rights because of that.

The phone service comes into my house via a small ATT wireless home phone base (receiver) that has an ATT cell phone sim card in it just like GSM cell phones do. Inside the house I have wireless home phones. Except the phone base, of my home phones, is wired to the ATT home phone base (the cell signal receiver/transmitter).

I also dropped my wired DSL service in November, 2013. I signed up for U-verse high speed internet, which I soon found out is still a service provided over copper wires to my home. It seems to be a re branding of DSL service with some unknown to me technical changes. After some set up problems it is more reliable than my old DSL service which had become increasingly and very frustratingly unreliable...requiring increasingly frequent calls to ATT customer technical service technicians from around the world (India, Philippines, Costa Rica, etc.).

I have noticed that ATT is now is very quick to threaten to cut off phone and internet services if a bill is late rather than let it roll over to the next bill with a late charge. A little frustration is that they can no longer bill both services in one bill like they previously did with my wired home phone and DSL. I now receive two separate bills which complicates bill paying a little.

edit to add: If I wanted to use a fax the new wireless phone service is incompatible with faxing. It also may not provide my location if I call 911 in an emergency. Plus the new internet service often seems to "think" my location is well over 100 miles away.

[dixiegrrrrl]

8. My concern, too.

We have a land line and dsl.
Many people out here in rural Ala. keep land lines, for when the cell towers don't work, which is about 1/3 of the time.

We need that land line for emergency use during our ferocious storms.

We might could hook up to Mediacom cable, but they have a rotten record of responding to problems out here.

[Art_from_Ark]

68. This topographic map indicates that Carbon Hill

Last edited Tue Mar 4, 2014, 10:04 AM - Edit history (1)

is in a very hilly area of the state

http://www.topoquest.com/map.php?lat=33.90476&lon=-87.55519&datum=nad27&zoom=8&map=auto&coord=d&mode=zoomin&size=m

[jtuck004]

5. "public safety issues" power goes out in your neighborhood, water and phone at leas...oops, no phone

now, just water. Have to find another way to communicate, 'cause towers are all dark.

On the other hand, removing the power from the grid takes all those citizens out of communication with each other rather handily

[Throckmorton]

23. So does the copper land lines.

My twisted pair goes dead when the power fails, the batteries in the local repeater last about 3 hours. My cell service remained operational throughout. We have had 3 major outages in a little over 2 years (hurricanes Irene and Sandy, and last winters blizzard). I live in South Eastern Connecticut.

[jtuck004]

32. At least the twisted pair has a backup, cell towers don't have any, But I wonder if the towers

prove more overlapping coverage there than they do out Wes, or perhaps between the two coasts.

Makes me think an unlocked cell, not tied to a single carrier, would be handy in the future.

But people are more used to 99% up time now than they used to be. Not the only place standards have lowered.

[IDemo]

39. Most central offices have diesel backup generators

Not sure why any in your area don't.

[DeschutesRiver]

58. We have century tel in a rural area. The repeater is on a remote mountain top, uses solar

which ices up and fails when the weather is bad. The backup runs out long before they can get to the site. When bad weather comes, and the phone lines here go dead, we have to wait for Cen Tel to send a snow cat with a crew to the site, which is miles to the mountain top. This takes a very long time. Happens a few times each winter.

Any central office diesel backup is not applicable in our situation; perhaps this is true for the other poster as well. It wasn't until we moved here that I understood that not everyone's situation is the same, even with something as simple as I incorrectly assumed landline service was. Century tel does the bare minimum required, and nothing more. we have been without service for weeks at times with no reduction in our service bill. We use a cell phone, though the coverage out here isn't all that great. Way better than it used to be. We would like to eliminate the land line due to its unreliability out here.

Sometimes a simple switch will have an issue and the lines go dead. The repairman comes from a city that is hundreds of miles away, so the repair of something very simple can take days. There is a major city far closer. But we have asked the PUC and Cen Tel isn't required to have a repair person closer, so we have had to wait for up to a week for a 1/2 hour repair. And they will not upgrade the equipment, so they keep patching it and letting it fail periodically because it is cheaper. That is the reality of some rural landline service. I grew up in a rural area but we never had these kind of issues back then.

[Throckmorton]

59. I am not directly connect to the CO

My copper goes to a buried node, that is backed up by batteries. That is connect to our CO via fiber. The batteries die in 3 to 4 hours, at some point (usually 5 or 6 days later) the TELCO brings in a small genset to restore power to the node.

Both of the cell sites within easy reach for me have pad mounted gensets.

[WinkyDink]

26. I don't understand your post. My landline works fine in a total black-out.

[jtuck004]

29. The landline has power form the central office batteries. The

wireless is dependent on power to the repeaters. If power in the area goes down, at least the wired line works for a time.

The wireless may too, if there is power to a nearby repeater. Otherwise it goes immediately, no backup.

[SoapBox]

9. I still have my land line...and they will have to pry it from my cold dead hands.

1. I fax a lot. Business still uses faxing a LOT especially when it involves getting a dated signature.

2. Hate talking on a cell! Crappy sounding, signals get dropped and I still feel like I'm microwaving my brain and hands.

3. In an earthquake zone, we learned (!!!) that the cell towers went down right away but the land line still worked AND the land line carries it's own power. When the power is out and if you use up your cell juice...You are out of luck.

We'll see how this "internet" service goes.

[question everything]

14. My sentiments, too.

Both last year and this winter, when the temp. went down, like -20, or so, we lost cable - both TV and Internet. A connection that slowly returned as the temp. warmed. Last year I had a technician who admitted that, yes, when the temps. are that cold there are problems with transmission.

And while we can do without TV and Internet connection, I cannot imagine being without a phone connection. Yes, we have cell phones, the basics, no "Smartphones." Last summer when a major storm left 80% of the city without power for several days, many went to the Supermarket that worked on an auxiliary generator to charge their phones. And, of course, storms can topple cell towers, or just overwhelm them.

I need to contact my representatives to express my concerns. Not that they would respond.

[Samantha]

20. When 9/11 happened, here in DC cell phones were blocked for usage by most people

That was done so that the really important people would have no problems using their phones. I will never forget that, and I will never voluntarily give up my land line.

Sam

[Travis_0004]

37. As a result of 911, Wireless Priority Service was created

It gives certain uses priority on the network when needed.

I don't have a landline, but I have a 2m handheld radio, and I can use autopatch to hit a landline.

(Autopatch allows a radio (usually 2m, but not always) to connect to a phone line. You can call 911, or order a pizza, but everything you say can be heard by everybody, so there is no privacy). The only real downside is the 911 operator will think you you are where ever the antenna is (which is on top of a water tower in my case).

I can see your point of view. I'm not concerned about not having a landline, but a few years ago our ham radio club wanted to disable auto patch to save money (since the rise of cell phones had made it irrelevant, but a lot of members wanted to keep it for its emergency use.

[Samantha]

54. That was the lonliest feeling in the world

I worked on Connecticut Avenue in a large law firm. No one could come in from Maryland or Virginia to DC (for instance, to pick up a relative or a friend) and the subway was shut down. The only one who could possibly help me was my brother, who had some connections but I had no way to get in touch with him. A vendor out on the sidewalk told me the Pentagon and the White House were both burning as a result of being attacked.

I ended up contacting a friend who worked in DC and asked if he by any chance had driven in. He had! I asked if he would pick me up when he left work, and if he would be willing to take some other personnel in his car to my house in Maryland, where their relatives could pick them up. He did. I imagine we would have had to slept in the offices had it not been for him. But everyone was upset because they could not use their cells.

I understand certain people need to be given priority privileges in time of a disaster. But I also understand thousands of people cannot be left stranded with no assistance from the government, or even a word, in time of extreme calamity.

I am not familiar with the 2m handheld radio but maybe I should ask my brother about it. Thanks.

Sam

[Travis_0004]

56. 2m is an amateur radio frequency

So it does need a license to operate, but its very useful in times of emergency. (and if you had the equipment, you don't need a license to operate in an emergency, but without practice, you may have trouble).

I volunteer with an organization that provides commutation during a disaster relief. We would typically provide communication for the red cross and county organizations if the grid goes down. I've done some drills, but thankfully no major emergencys yet.

During 9/11, The NYC emergency command center was located at the World Trade center, so communications were crippled for them, and a lot of Amateur radio organizations stepped up to help them until everything was back on line. (unfortunately the major organization that is supposed to facilitate commutation between amateur radio and the government was also in the WTC) so a lot of equipment was lost.

Even if you didn't volunteer, with a simple 2m radio (which can be as cheap as 50.00) will let you get a ton of information in an emergency. The range is somewhat limited (20 miles), but I can get on other frequencies and communicate about as far as I want to (Europe and beyond with a HF radio.)

[area51]

22. +1 n/t

[WinkyDink]

27. PREACH!

[Nanjing to Seoul]

33. Solutions to you your problems

1: Innoport.com is what I use for faxes.

2: Skype works fantastic. . .so does Magic Jack. (I use both in China).

3: Can't help you on the outside change that would happen. I don't live in, on or near a plate boundary.

[enlightenment]

52. Agree.

Especially about the sound - I don't even like the cordless extension on my landline - I prefer the corded receiver. Best phone in my house is the old ATT Trimline. Crystal clear.

[RobinA]

66. Me Too.

During Hurricane Sandy and the recent ice storms, the only thing that worked for days each time was the copper wire landline. Cell Phone? pffft Not robust.

[dembotoz]

10. my mom still has a rotary phone on the was--that would no longer work

land lines my be going bye bye for residentials but they remain how things are done in business.
this will really mess with them.


personally i am curious how they plan to handle elevator lines
land lines by design have their own power source so incase of power outage the landline remains.
in voice over ip these lines go down to.
battery backup will only be a couple hours if that.

so if you are in a voip area learn to use the stairs

similar concerns with alarm lines==if the power goes out is it ok that no one is monitoring those big chemical tanks at the back of the factory.

[iamthebandfanman]

15. What happens when the internet

is down?

I don't think landlines should ever be phased out completely.

then again, I refuse to use wireless internet too because of wired being more secure and reliable (imho)....

maybe im just stuck in my ways

[AtheistCrusader]

16. Who the hell has a land line anymore

[Tess49]

17. I do.

[AtheistCrusader]

18. Welp.

On the upside, there's a little cost to it, but you can use an ETMA modem and get phone anyway, just like a land line. You can think of yourself as a mini-phone company of your own, and everything goes out through fibre or cable.

Also, this thing is cheap and will work with Google Voice for free:

http://www.obihai.com/

The main unit is about 40 bucks on Amazon.

[WinkyDink]

28. OR---we can keep our current landline phones, duh.

[AtheistCrusader]

50. Sure, but your cost is going to go up.

As more people cut the cord, rates will go up for the ones who stay.

[ChazII]

48. I also have a land line

for the reasons mentioned in other posts.

One of my friends has a pace maker and it is through his land line that his cardiologist gets daily readings.

[Redfairen]

21. People way out in the country where cellular service is still nonexistent.

It's not yet profitable to build it in places where an expensive cell tower will probably never receive heavy traffic. There are an awful lot of rural areas that still fit that description.

[WinkyDink]

25. I do. My mother does. SOLELY. What's your point? That something that worked for a century AND STILL

DOES is somehow obsolete? Some people make phone calls; we don't need to take photos of our doctors, garage guys, repairmen, etc.

[eilen]

45. I can sympathize with your point

about landlines being dependable, reliable and less prone to outage as the newer tech. I feel this way at work. I work in the medical field as a nurse. We used to use paper and ink for medication lists and administration. My med book never broke down. Sometimes it was mislaid but it always worked. Now I have to scan patients like the grocery clerk. I find people (nurses) pay less attention to the 5Rs when scanning and giving meds. It is not a time saver either because a lot of time is spend in getting the tech to work correctly and fight with the software program.

We used to use Kardexes to write down the pt's specific orders and tests-- in pencil. I could look at it and find out when labs were drawn and sent. Now it is on the computer and I can tell you when the labs were ordered but can't tell when they were drawn and sent-- there is no tracking. Also, occasionally the wireless printer and the computer have a breakdown in communication so if you try to print out the shift information sheets, they don't print and you are screwed and have to see if there are any old ones (which are not updated with latest orders). That is a PITA and takes longer to get report.

We also used to be able to quickly look at the bedside flow sheets to track the v/s and the intake and output-- now it is on the computer so you must find one and log on and look these up which takes longer and there is greater opportunity for interruption thus, these tasks fall through often-- I used to check these sheets every day on my last rounds near end of shift to ensure the work was done, now I come on shift and find things not totaled like they should have been because everyone is busy staring at their screens and clicking boxes and don't often have a chance to do a last visual rounds.

Instead of making it quicker and simpler, it is more complicated and more time consuming and since the computers have the capability there is demand for more more more and we are only one one one.

[truthisfreedom]

19. There's copper in them thar poles!

It's all about the metal.

kidding, of course. or not?

[WinkyDink]

24. Then someone please make cell-phones easier to use, read, and touch. Old eyes and hands, you know.

[IDemo]

30. Here's one option

From Tracfone. No contract, no "Smartphone" features, just calling and texting. "Hearing aid compatible", for what it's worth.

http://www.tracfoneblogs.com/2013/05/simplify-your-life-with-tracfones-big.html

[mahatmakanejeeves]

49. That's the phone I got my mom for Christmas 2012.

Whoops, I mean, "a holiday in December," of course. I got it specifically for the size of the buttons and display. Best Buy put them on sale for $20. I despise BB, so I went to Target with the ad. They matched the price. I bought the last one in the store, but they came back in stock. They are probably still for sale today.

The phone has no camera or any other bells or whistles. It does have a built-in flashlight. I have no complaints about it.

[Travis_0004]

34. Internet based does not equal cell phone

We have IP phones where I work. They look like landlines, and there are probably some employees that have no clue they are not traditional landlines. At no point are the phones ever wireless. They use a wired internet connection all the way.

[du_grad]

57. We have a land line that is not a copper wire

Our local cable company also provides a land line via computer. My husband is hard of hearing and it is much easier for him to use our cordless land line (with a booster button to jack up the sound) on this phone than on his cell. It is cheap and we have had better luck with this than when we were on AT&T's land line service.

I like the idea of having extension phones in the house rather than hauling my cell phone around all of the time.

BTW, we also switched to Tracfones a year ago, as I was tired of paying usurious amounts to Verizon every month. You can get triple minute Tracfones through Amazon. Somebody else in this thread mentioned the Tracfone "Big Easy." They have a lot of those available on Amazon also with double minutes. My husband uses so few minutes a month that $9.95/month is all I pay to add minutes to his phone.

http://tinyurl.com/mlq97x7

Tracfone has recently come out with an Android smartphone (prepaid) also that has triple minutes for life.

http://tinyurl.com/lroxvps

[Tess49]

47. Exactly! And I have a family member living with me who has medical issues

that would make using a cell phone very difficult for him.

[IDemo]

31. We both left the phone company in the 90's after many years on the job

And went cell only not long afterwards. Over half of households in Idaho are cell only, the highest in the nation.

[Kilgore]

36. Have been landline free for 5 years

At home We moved over to cell service from Tracphone after Qwest (CenturyLink) increased their rates and degraded service.

Our business ditched landlines shortly thereafter and went to 100% VOIP after the installation of fiber provided internet from a non-telco provider. Cost was the big driver, but we also have had less service issues after making the switch.

Overall, glad we did it. It's obvious judging by service in our area that the phone company is making no investment in copper. Maintenance or otherwise.

Kilgore

[onenote]

38. The article and the comments are missing the real point

Last edited Sun Mar 2, 2014, 11:09 AM - Edit history (1)

First, as others have pointed out, ATT's trial does not propose getting rid of "landlines" and switching everyone to wireless. It proposes getting everyone off of the copper based traditional phone lines and onto Internet Protocol voice service. That service would be provided to most people via wireline-based fiber distribution plant.

Second, one of the main reasons ATT wants to transition from traditional plant to fiber is that, under the 1996 Telecom Act, as implemented by the FCC, incumbent phone companies like ATT have to interconnect their copper plant to competing local exchange carriers at regulated rates. On the other hand, the FCC has said that incumbent phone companies like ATT don't have to provide interconnection with competing IP voice services. Interconnection is essential to any company expecting to offer a residential or business voice service in competition with a company like ATT or Verizon.

[dembotoz]

41. yep

[Lenomsky]

40. Switch from POTS to VoIP

Copper xDSL is restricted by distance from the exchange, Coax not as much but both offer IP services i.e. Broadband so AT&T will want to put in place VoIP Switches as it's cheaper and more flexible with additional revenue bolted on to the broadband such as TV, Movies etc.

I doubt they are about to rip out existing copper plant but if they have cell coverage they may try get customers to switch to a 4G Cellular solution and disconnect the existing copper plant.

The only reason I have a land line is I get free broadband yes literally free. I pay only for phone line connection rental which I seldom use as broadband and my cell phone suffice.

Not sure how this will all work out in rural areas. I guess we watch this space see what the actual proposals are.

[Trillo]

42. Sounds like a plan to increase surveillance and decrease security of our phone calls.

When AT&T "asked" us to change to UVERSE from DSL, it was accompanied by fear and bullying. They called us at least once everyday, and we live in a house where the phone will go for weeks without ringing. They told us if we didn't sign up, the DSL would be automatically disconnected. We finally relented, but the new UVERSE will not bring up Google lighting fast the way it always used to on DSL, sometimes it hangs for maybe a minute, and youtube videos, the smaller ones, tinfoil some might say, often refuse to play, being interrupted by something, requiring a page refresh. That AT&T is now in the video delivery biz suggests to me why this likely is occurring. Additionally, my old Win 98 network and print server no longer works with the new system, and Microsoft no longer supports those old software systems, but with the DSL, it worked fine. AT&T essentially obsoleted our equipment. It is impossible to set a public DNS through the UVERSE modem, while the old one allowed that when it worked in bridge mode. The new modem has no "bridge mode" though there are complex sets of instructions available online that may allow similar functionality. So many probllems.

I don't understand why, except for bribery, ahem, I mean campaign donations, that corporations are allowed to keep taking our money and then decreasing our services while telling us they're improvements. When most of us were caught lying in schools, we were expelled or otherwise severely punished. Yet these corporations lie to us constantly, and nobody spanks them.

[BuelahWitch]

55. I am going through that now

And trying to fight it. I don't want to give up my DSL, nor do I want my internet to "answer" my phone. They say they will shut it off "eventually" I told them that will give me time to investigate other options...

[Trillo]

60. I recently learned the videos that are problematical

(and I mean having to restart them so many times one never does reach the end, too time consuming) that routing through an anonymizing proxy fixes the download problem. It seems the malicious server is in AT&T's routing path, and it confirms the issue is not a problem with local software.

[joanbarnes]

43. AT&T is AT LEAST ten years behind the times!

[dembotoz]

64. in some ways yes and other ways no

some of the business stuff is really quite good

[Aristus]

46. How about that?

I didn't know they even had phone service in rural Alabama...

[PumpkinAle]

53. Have Landline - necessary for emergency calls

but use Skype to contact friends and family who are world-wide.

We are in a very rural area surrounded by mountains and service is spotty - no cell phone coverage available where actually live. And there are plenty of people like us.

When up and running the we use wireless internet - but when down, it can be down for hours and sometimes days - that would mean no contact with anyone unless you have a landline.

Hopefully, this will be fully investigated in all regions of US not just a nice little town that has plenty of access to internet based services.

[Beacool]

61. I have kept my landline.

First of all, I don't walk around my apt. with the cell phone in my hand. I can hear the landline phone anywhere in the apt.

Second and most important, on 9/11/01 and the blackout two years later, cell phones didn't work but the landline did. Ditto for Sandy, no electricity, no cell phone charge.

[tammywammy]

65. This is about switching from current landlines to VoIP

Not to just cell phones.

BTW, you can get a weather radio with a cellphone charger.
http://www.amazon.com/NFR160WXB-Microlink-Self-Powered-Weather-Flashlight/dp/B001QTXKB0/ref=pd_sxp_f_pt

[Beacool]

67. Thanks.

I have a weather radio, but it doesn't have a cell phone charger.

I still like the landline, call me old fashioned. LOL!!!