Tag Archives: Landlines

Home Phone

FCC Wants Landline to Be Treated the Same Way as Broadband

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FCC

The FCC heads back to the United States Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C to argue that it has the authority to regulate the existing internet providers with the ultimate goal of ensuring that all the legal content over the Internet is treated equally.

Users have a complaint against the company regarding net neutrality rules twice in front of the same court and beside one judge in particular, David Tatel. Previously, Tatel and his robed crew came to a conclusion that the FCC hasn’t had enough legal ground to regulate Internet access as if it is a public utility like electricity and water service and has sided with the opponents, internet access companies.

However, things are expected to go in a different way. Close sources revealed that Tatel’s previous ruling built a “roadmap” for the present ruling and a new Framework that the FCC can work with. The turning point, in this case, is that the FCC is defining “broadband” in a more unique way than before. It has now started including it under a statute known as Title II, that places broadband in the realm of telephone service. As the FCC has complete power to regulate phones, the agency argued that it had a solid case where it can attach most of the telephone rules to broadband.

In addition, the FCC is content as the Obama administration constantly supports the new rules to make another legal attempt if they lose this particular round. What matters the most is the FCC has promised it is not willing to set prices for high-speed Internet services and assured that new regulations will not allow them to that power.

Home Phone

Landline and Cellphone Services Cut in Tooele Due to Heavy Snow

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Residents of Tooele County had to face problems due to loss of cell phone and landline services on Monday. The county people had difficulty in reaching out to the police and other emergency services due to the outage. The county situation turned worse due to heavy snow. Around 8 to 12 inches of snow fell in the county which blocked the roads and disrupted most of the basic services leading to a host of weather-related crashes.

According to Tooele County emergency manager Bucky Whitehouse, the reason why the problem occurred is because a construction crew accidently struck a fiber optic line that runs between Salt Lake and Tooele valleys. Both landline and cell phone services had to suffer the consequences of the damage that started in the afternoon and continued till late evening. “Most of our day has been very difficult in terms of travel. We’ve had numerous slide-offs and numerous crashes that have occurred in our main roadways in and out of the Tooele area,” he said. “So it’s been a pretty challenging day.”

Parts of Tooele Valley resumed services early evening, but the CenturyLink repair crew didn’t give an estimate as to when the complete service will be restored and the issues will be fixed. “We practice and exercise to operate without communication capability” Whitehouse said. “However, it’s unique that both cell service as well as landline service (are) down simultaneously. Fortunately, crews are aware of the situation and restoring service just as quickly as they can.”

Thankfully, anyone in Tooele can easily get emergency help by dialing 911 over their phone.

“If they have got a dial tone … our system has been forwarded to the Utah County 911 Dispatch Center and they are triaging the call and sending it back to us. And then we’re taking care of dispatching our emergency resources in the Tooele Valley,” Whitehouse said.

During the phone outages, police, fire and ambulance services were patrolling Tooele roadways and were ready to help those in trouble. “Right now, due to the heavy snowfall and the weather challenges that we’re having in the valley, we would just encourage our residents to not travel if they don’t absolutely need to go out,” he said. “Please stay home and allow our snow plows and all of our responders to be able to take care of the roads.”

 

landline

Due to Landline Disappearance, Funding for 911 Suffers

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Landline Disapperanace              

As landlines are disappearing rapidly across the US, the funding for 911 communication has drastically dropped. This has left various cities as well as countries struggling in order to maintain the old system and is forcing them to pay for different upgrades or purchases of new systems.

The director of governmental affairs for National Emergency Number Association, Trey Forgety stated “This is sort of a consequence of the structural changes the telecommunication market has gone through over the past 20 years.” The problem faced by Kentucky is worst where the government may charge some fee on landlines for the usage of 911 services, but they can’t tax cell phones. The fee collected by them from cellphone users had 20% of the total cost that was used to operate the 911 services.

The local government has now increased the landline fee in order to make up some of the difference. But this year a law has been passed for deregulating the services of landline so that the telecom companies can stop maintaining them. The local officials said that this law has paced up the loss of landline customers and has made it impossible for the rest of the customers to cope up with the cost. An AT&T spokesperson has claimed landlines have started disappearing at the speed of 8,000 per month in Kentucky even before the government had passed the law.

The Kentucky League of Cities announced that it is important for the state to raise around $32 million to cover the revenue that has been lost from landlines. They have planned to increase the cell phone fee between $1 and $1.50 per phone. Daniel Hayes, AT&T spokesperson said the company “recognizes the need for laws to keep the pace with rapidly changing technology, and we are participating in the ongoing dialogue.”

                 

Home Phone

The Big Shift in Landline Usage and Infrastructure

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new landline

 

It’s been about 130 years that the traditional landline, a phone system distributed via a network of copper wire, has been in place. And even while cell phones have carved a strong niche for themselves and their usage is almost ubiquitous, avid users of the old copper wire still remain. Going by data from major telecom companies, many households still prefer to stick to their traditional landlines due to certain benefits attached to them. For example, they offer unparalleled call clarity and 911 tracking response which cellphones fail to provide. Therefore, telecom companies insist that conventional landlines still remain a preferable option for consumers as telephone companies try and find the best fit for them.

Post the boom in the wireless sector, telecom companies are now geared to make infrastructure upgrades for Internet and television service to extend more options to homeowners. For example, a few months back Verizon capitalized on its expansive wireless networks to introduce wireless home phones with a product called Voice Link. This alternative can immensely improve home phone service, increase customer choice and ease out disruptions in regions where existing infrastructure for landlines may be chronically faulty. Wireless home phone customers receive hardware that allows them to tap into an existing mobile network for traditional home phone use. It receives the same dial tone and basic service through a new source at a similar price. As a result, this new method also proves quite beneficial for users.

Verizon is not the only company offering a service like this. AT&T just announced a compelling product that supplies voice service in the same manner. Even the AARP and Walmart have jumped into the mix, offering products that offer only voice service.

Executives from various renowned telecom companies insist that wireless home phone service is not a replacement for traditional land lines. It could rather be a welcome option for customers who have suffered continued problems with their conventional wired phone service due to aging copper infrastructure.

Thanks to such developments, as well as competition for landline customers among cable companies, fiber optic providers, and voice over Internet providers, there are more offerings for traditional home phone services to television and internet subscribers at competitive prices.

Home Phone

Why Landlines are Important in Case of an Emergency

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red phone

Today’s mobile phones provide smart features and high-end specifications. They care capable of performing tasks similar to that of a personal computer. But we still need them for fulfilling the basic purpose of making phone calls, especially in case of emergencies. When someone is in an emergency situation, the leading-edge modern cell phone technology doesn’t serve the purpose as well as a land line.

The primary question that is asked when you dial 911 is “Where is your emergency”? Irrespective of the problem, this is considered to be the most crucial question in an emergency because the 911 folks need to know where they have to extend help. Cell phones aren’t useful in this context as their location isn’t traceable with ease. On the other hand, “Landlines” are incredible when it comes locating it’s origin. This is possible because the device is linked to a particular address. Sadly, the GPS feature on the cellphone doesn’t work as well indoors as it does outdoors which makes it difficult for the first responder to retrieve the address and location information.

In order to fix this overlooked yet critical problem, the Federal Communications Commission has put forward new regulations for wireless carriers but wireless providers are resisting this change. While sharing his experience, a 911 responder told a story of an 8-year-old boy who called him up and couldn’t read well and his parents were also illiterate. The boy’s parents had some medical emergency. The caretaker advised him to move outside and read the address of the house and it took him 10 minutes to do so. Although he managed to spell out the numbers regarding the address, such critical situations make providing the address verbally sometimes difficult. In the said situation, if the same call had come through a landline phone, identifying the location of that house would have been much easier as a pop up containing the exact address is displayed on the computer screens in the 911 department the moment a landline call is received.

Such cases may turn disastrous for the victims if help doesn’t reach them in time simply because the call did not go in through a landline phone. Therefore, no matter how tech savvy the world may have become, landlines still have their advantages. They serve some crucial purposes that cellphones cannot.

Landline at work

Why You Need a Landline at Work

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landline

We all may have witnessed the recent booming era of advances in mobile technology and felt the urge to use the same for our businesses and workplaces. As a result, smaller business setups often give into the impulse to cut the landline chord in order to save some more money. However, the decision often turns out to be less than useful for businesses. Whether you’ve just begun with a startup and are evaluating your options for office phone systems or, you’re an accomplished businessman reconsidering your landline, money should be the last thing on your mind while evaluating the benefits of the device. After all, saving money can’t be important enough to sacrifice successful business growth.

For establishments staffing a large number of employees, depending solely on cellphone technology could turn out to be risky. Many booming organizations recommend employees and firms not to leave out their office-based landline phones. Although businesses perpetually hunt for options that help them cut costs in areas of operation, they can leave that savings for other areas that are not as critical as a communication channel. Communication stands as a very important aspect of an organization’s structure and should not be risked at any cost. Although companies focus on saving money by reducing costs, using a mobile phone can cost even more later on, as frustrated customers who can’t discuss their issues clearly over cellphones pile up and force you to make amends. Swapping the landlines with cellphones could, therefore, backfire as a business decision.

It might feel and sound archaic for you to bank on or get back to using landlines for office communication, but the fact is that their significance cannot be ignored in the this domain. Landlines phones can offer a level of reliability and voice quality that simply cannot be matched by cell phones. Some businesses may be located in areas that do not provide for a strong signal reception or broadband access for mobile devices and in those cases, landlines undeniably stand as a strong contender. With organizations becoming increasingly aware of the unbeatable advantages of landline phones over cellphones, landline services are increasingly coming back in demand for their promising performance.

 

Landline Services

Is a Clear Connection A Lost Commodity?

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clear connection

We often hear people complaining about how they find that the landlines at their homes are simply unjustified expenses. Most households feel they are not using the landlines at their homes adequately enough and that’s primarily because they all use cellphones more than ever. Yet, there are those who still have complete faith in the power of this old school but reliable device.

There are a number of data companies across USA that are consistently working to promote the use of landlines owing to the benefits of the hard wired communications option. The company is sharing mail pamphlets bearing the title “Miss having a clear connection?” The truth as we all know it is that at one point or the other, we all have faced the troubles that come with unclear conversations, poor signals, and a dying battery while using cellphones. But home phones don’t do that to you, no matter how long you use them. And that’s because they do not boast of a wireless network. That’s also why we love the wired device. It has a clarity that is unparalleled and connectivity that is dependable!

Land line telephones form a critical resource for businesses. Lately, the use of telephone for business communication may have dipped a bit owing to greater use of computers and the internet. Yet, landline telephones are still rated better than cellphones as far as communication and satisfaction is concerned. A major reason for this is that business set ups largely depend upon landline connections so as to establish user identification, have clearer communication that does not get interrupted by low signals, and have a lasting reliability on a device that does not need charging.

Nowadays, landlines have even more sophisticated features such as the teleconferencing ability that has helped many businesses overcome the challenges of long distance business communication or conferences. It brings people together from all over the organization at a fraction of the cost of travel and meeting facilities. When used along with video conferencing, conference calls bring an essence of face-to-face meeting to the meeting as live presentations are watched, questions are circulated and answers are discussed among a large group of people attending the call.

 

 

Landline Services

3 Reasons Businesses Should Have Landlines

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There might have been a drop in the frequency of use of landline phones for business communication because of the advent of computers as well as the internet. However, landline telephones still rank higher when rated on clarity of communication from a business related viewpoint. No matter how fast and effective the technology, cellphones still cannot match the communication satisfaction granted by old fashioned telephones. A major reason for this is that business set ups essentially depend upon landline usage in order to establish user identification, provide for a clearer communication and ensure a long lasting use on the device that does not need battery charging.

Telephone communication may be slower, and not as speedy and quick as its new-age media counterparts, such as email, instant messaging, and social media. Nevertheless, the benefits drawn from using landlines easily exceeds the few limitations it has. In the impersonal world we live in, the landline telephone that connects a caller with a human through voice, is still a very important business resource. Here are some reasons why it is so:

Effective and Clear Communication

Conversing with someone via the telephone is nearly as good as talking with someone face-to-face. For situations where a face-to-face meeting is not feasible, a phone call is the best way to get an immediate, personal response. As with other forms of communication, such as texting or email, you leave a message and hope for a quick response. In many cases, responses do get delayed for some reason and can become a source of stress if the business requirement demands a quicker revert or action.

Better Message Transmission

The three most vital elements of effective communications include body language that accounts for 55%, tone of voice that accounts for 38% and spoken words that represent 7%. The tone of voice has such importance because it provides dimension and emotion to words. Over the telephone, it further increases the effectiveness of the communication as body language cannot be assessed in that case. Yet, certain aspects of body language, such as smiling and walking while talking, tend to come across in a telephonic conversation.

Economical for Multiple Participants in Call

The teleconferencing feature that is offered by landline telephones nowadays is a provision that has surpassed the barriers of the traditional two-way communication on a telephone. It brings people together from all over the organization and from different geographical locations at a very minimal cost. Such features have immensely helped save time and resources of organizations. Conference calls, when used along with video conferencing bring the essence of a personal meeting to the communication as presentations are viewed, questions are asked via the Internet and answers are discussed among a number of people attending the call.

Although many a great features compel that landlines be used in organizations and offices, the three benefits mentioned above are features that cannot be matched by cellphones.