Only days after casually tossing off an editor’s letter in which I noted that consumers had moved on from expecting their landline telephone service to also be a lifeline, I discovered this wasn’t entirely true.
For my sister and her family, living in Houston, a working home phone has been a lifeline. It has enabled them to contact family members and assure them that all was well. The phone line let my sister contact me and through me, access her email to notify work colleagues around the country that she wouldn’t be available for a while.
And when the days stretched on with no sign of commercial power coming back, the phone line was my sister’s way of reaching out for help. How else would I have known that mail service in Houston was working even when the power wasn’t? The 12-pack of “D” batteries I sent via overnight mail comes in handy when the power’s still off and the stores aren’t restocked yet.
Of course, not everyone in Houston has working phones, despite AT&T’s efforts to get generators and fresh batteries out to their remote terminals and other sites, but for those that did, the landline phone was a lifeline.
Is it reason enough to keep a home phone, and not rely simply on a wireless service? Probably not for everyone. Power outages that last for days or weeks are still pretty rare.
But the Houston experience shows that we can’t be too casual in cutting the lifeline that landline phones do often provide, at least not until there’s something to replace it, like small, inexpensive generators for recharging cellphones.
your sister’s experience has been lived multiple times in rural from blizzards, tornadoes and floods. Land line reliability is extremely important in the vast expanses of rural america. that is why we have regularly equipped our offices with standby power for years. Mick Jensen
You are correct is assuming that more and more consumers are using only their cell phone as their base communication tool. It is so easy to forget how difficult things can get in bad weather situations. Power outtages are not restricted to costal areas. There are blizzards, ice storms and massive tornadoes. All of which are power effecting and can physically take out the cell towers all together.
POTS? Not in my son’s Houston apartment. Like most of the people he saw after IKE, he was only able to use a cell phone, but network capacity was tight and reliability shaking, so we communicated by text message. He’d send us updates, and we’d tell him what stores were open or who had power.
Interestingly, the Galleria shopping center never lost power and was open the next day – like a huge party! He said every A/C outlet had a cell phone plugged in to charge up. And the line at Cheeze Cake Factory was 2.5 hours.
I have had my power out for one or two weeks after heavy rains and flooding here in sunny california. Although the power and phone lines were under water, the phone worked even though the power was out. Cell phone? I could never get a reliable connection at my home or some other places in the vicinity.
I gave up my cell phone last year because it didn’t work at my apartment, when I was in most places or situations where I could really use it, was too expensive for something that didn’t work most of the time, poor call quality, and had only used for 17minutes for the whole year.
Both landlines and cell phones are iffy here in the Houston area. Cell phone service has been intermittent. Reports are that FEMA and Homeland Security have taken over some of the circuits. As for landlines, my phone has been dead since Friday night. The reason? My landline is fiber optic going into my neighborhood, which requires electricity. My area is not expected to get power until next Monday. So much for the old reliable copper pair.
In addition to comments posted here, I’ve received numerous emails on this topic, a few of which pointed me to sites that sell hand-cranked devices for powering cellphones. I guess I know what I’ll be getting my sister’s family for Christmas.
Most folks agreed that telephone lines tend to be more reliable than power lines, cable lines or cell service during disasters, although that wasn’t universally the case.
Personal Update: In Houston right now, my sister’s family is still without power, which is coming back on a block by block basis. They can see houses with lights on, but that’s about it. The phone still works and the batteries I sent came in handy for the couple of days that Houston store shelves were empty. They can now buy ice and most other commodities.
Back to the bigger picture: I guess the question is, does the need for a lifeline during occasional disasters outweigh other issues? Where Verizon is installing its FiOS service, for example, there will be no line-powered phone service to keep working wehn commercial power fails and the battery backups only last so long. My colleague, Dawn Bushaus, wrote about this at length here.
One major finding: the telcos aren’t talking about this issue publicly. I wonder why.
Telcos are in an awkward position — they used to be able to feed customers 10+ miles out from the central office backed up by batteries and generators, but with the advent of FTTN followed by FTTH to provide high speed internet services and IP TV, the number of power points has increased exponentially. Appropriately sized batteries are placed in the nodes, but it’s not practical (read: customer’s won’t pay for it) to co-locate generators, plus line-powering still doesn’t perform.
It is what it is.
Frank, I agree with you that telcos are facing a major challenge. That was the essence of the story posted here — http://connectedplanetonline.com/fttp/news/telecom_lighting_nextgen_nets/index.html
that got this whole discussion started.
It seems to me that telcos’s response to this has been to become very quiet about it, and I don’t think that works long term. Both Verizon and AT&T declined repeated requests to talk about this issue, which is a sure sign of potential problems.