Ken said:
Your choice of course, but I certainly would call it that .It uses a
plugged-in telephone, not one I carry in my pocket, and it's therefore
a land line to me.
I don't know for sure, but I would expect the great majority of people
to agree with me.
To me, a landline is a direct copper connection to a central facility,
where the central facility distributes a reliable source of power to
make it work. No other competing solution offers that.
Home End Central End
POTS Telephony No power needed Batteries/Generator (tested and working)
VOIP over ADSL Power needed Remote DSLAM may not have backups
VOIP over cable Power needed Cable system probably isn't fully backed up
Cellphone Cell batteries Cell Towers don't always have generators
When we had a major power failure here, all the nuclear powered generating
stations tripped, none of the cellphones worked. Lots of people
were borrowing my old fashioned phone, to make calls. The outage lasted
for days. I always had dialtone during that period. POTS may cost $50 per month,
when other solutions cost $30, but it has some features you cannot match.
The Central Office uses batteries (used to send -48V over the
telephone wires). The batteries are sized to last at
least a day. Diesel generators take over before the batteries run out.
In addition, I've also seen truck mounted 2000HP generators
used, while there is site maintenance at the Central Office
(both my local CO, and the CO downtown).
Even when providers build a patchwork quilt to try to match
POTS, they aren't always successful. There have been cases,
where an alternative service claimed to support 911, only
to have a case arise where someone couldn't get help, because
they couldn't (successfully) figure out where they were.
Imagine the following scenario.
1) There is an electrical fire.
2) You race downstairs and turn off the power.
3) You race upstairs... and you can't make that VOIP call.
If I do that here, even in total darkness inside the house,
I can still make that all-important telephone call.
A Cellphone can match that, and gradually cellphones are
becoming every bit as good as POTS. But the VOIP solutions
have a long way to go. Nobody mandates that your
VOIP solution will work when you need it most. It's
up to you, to ash the question of your VOIP provider,
then follow up by googling for horror stories.
Paul
