March 29, 2008
Land Line
It has come to my attention that many people are relying on Cell Phones and disconnecting their Land Line -- BAD IDEA!!
In the event of a disaster such as the power failure that took out New York or a large earthquake, tornado, huricane, flood, whatever it is very possible that Cell Service will fail.
Your Land Line, on the other hand, will likely continue to work. The Central Offices were built to last indefinitely, no matter what. The telephone system runs on battery power, sort of like a giant UPS. We have rectifiers connected to commercial power to float a charge on the batteries, but the equipment is all powered off of batteries. BIG Batteries. LOTSA Big Batteries. Enough so that the whole office can continue running for a least a day on unassisted battery power. Blackouts? We laugh at blackouts. HaHaHa!
But it would be unusual for an office to run more than a few minutes on unassisted battery power. If commercial power dies we have backup generators, diesels or gas turbines, and at least a week's worth of fuel in an underground tank.
I don't know about you, but I kind of LIKE the idea that I will be able to call for help in an emergency -- no matter what. I use my Cell Phone for nearly everything. The Land Line is mostly ignored -- we haven't even changed the pre-recorded message on the answering machine. But that phone will continue to work without power. The cables are physically very tough and unlikely to break. (I was doing storm trouble one year, gentleman's phone was working, but the telephone line was on the ground. Seems this tree-sized branch fell off a really huge hundred year old tree and smacked the telephone line to the ground. The "branch" nearly filled his whole back yard -- and this was an old house with a large yard. "Phone works?" "yes" "Call us when the yard is cleared and we'll come back to put the phone line back up.") It takes a lot to knock out POTS -- plain old telephone service. I figure the $10-20 a month to be cheap insurance.
Posted by Paladin at March 29, 2008 10:43 AM