[conspire] Wondering about reasons to keep landline phone now that wonderful rawbandwidth's DSL is no longer available at my location.

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Mark Weisler (mark at weisler-saratoga-ca.us):

> I also lament the passing of the wonderful Rawbandwidth DSL service as
> it was just what I needed and worked so well at home and office for
> maybe 20 years. Oh, well. But thanks, Rick, for introducing me to it
> long ago. One reason a person might want to retain the landline is to
> have reliable emergency service. More on that in a second. Another,
> for me, is that the landline telephone number has been with our family
> for over six decades and is known to distant relatives who sometimes
> dial it.

I thought about it for a while, and on balance decided to terminate all
landline service immediately after Raw Bandwidth shut down aDSL.  So, we
here in Chez Moen have only cable Internet (Comcast Business) and mobile
telephone connectivity -- since then.

That means our fax machine is beached except as a funny-looking
photocopier, but that was pretty much solely what we used it for anyway.
Because, seriously, fax?

I feel somewhat greater regret that the reconditioned Western Electric 
dial-type wall-phone in the kitchen, that I put there mostly as a sight
gag and something to puzzle the young'uns with, is likewise beached.
But on the plus side, I save the landline fees.

I'm sure that, if I were determined, I could find hardware widgets that would
convert the analogue from (say) the wall-phone and fax machine to VoIP
-- which would be good for surrealism value, if nothing else.  But, for 
reasons you yourself cite, it'd be really helpful if not essential for
the widget to include intelligence to intercept and defeat inbound junk
calls.  (This could be a growth area for open-source hobbiests, as 
currently I perceive commercial VoIP providers to be rent-seeking
bandits offering poorly engineered, customer-impenetrable crud at high
prices.)

In our case, none of the three residents was giving out the landline
number any more, so we didn't regret surrending it.  And I must say
that, before we switched it off, basically zero incoming calls were
anything _but_ junk calls, and rather too many of those, too.

> With POTS the power was supplied by the central office so service
> would work when electrical power was out. Now, with VoIP, you have to
> have some battery backup in your home to be able to make calls during
> a power outage. For me and most, a mobile phone is simpler and already
> paid for.

That's basically where we came down, on the matter.

> I’ll probably migrate to Comcast business with a static IP but no VoIP. 

You're welcome to check out our setup, which is exactly that.

I've not done a lot of testing or metrics, nor have I replaced the
terrible Cisco router with something better that's under our sole
control rather than Comcast's NOC having root remotely on it.  There are
multiple reasons I haven't done any of those things, as of now --
starting with the fact that, technically, I'm not the customer.  My
mother-in-law Cheryl is.