Re: [OT] Tragedy, narrowly averted

On Thu, 6 Feb 2025 19:45:17 +0000, ItsJoanNotJoAnn wrote:

On Thu, 6 Feb 2025 19:09:34 +0000, dsi1 wrote:
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On Thu, 6 Feb 2025 18:35:07 +0000, ItsJoanNotJoAnn wrote:
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On Thu, 6 Feb 2025 15:40:39 +0000, dsi1 wrote:

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One of my clients has a POTS telephone that will randomly drop signal so
she can't understand the person she's talking to. The telephone company
will just shrug and say they don't know what's the problem and they
can't do anything about it. They want her to upgrade her service. I'm
not sure why she doesn't surrender and let the system have its way with
her. It's 2025 and we don't need no copper wire no more!
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I was on POTS and then I noticed was not receiving a.n.y.
phone calls.  That was actually nice, but then family and
friends were trying to reach me.  I was still able to make
outgoing calls though.
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AT&T came out and wiring on pole was just in tatters.  If
I wanted to receive calls then I'd have to convert to digital.
Digital is ok, but if power goes out, so does the phone, so
does the internet and of course anything electrical in the
house.  A few annoying glitches such as having to have the
system reset does not improve my opinion of digital service.
Service techs 'unplugging' me at the junction box is annoying
as well.

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Sending analog signals through copper wires goes back to the earliest
days of telecommunications. It's like piston engines had their start
with bicycles and steam locomotives. People will scarcely believe that
we used such things in 2025.
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But those signals through copper wiring r.a.r.e.l.y. failed
unlike the new, bright, and shiny digital service.  Even with
a cell phone as a backup system or you only phone you have to
scramble around to find a place to charge THAT if you don't
have a USB port in your car when power is lost.

A hardwired connection would be pretty darn reliable but it's
impractical. What are the chances that your hardwired copper connection
on your end will be 100% analog to who you're trying to reach? In the
future, that would be unlikely.
In the future, charging a cell phone might not be a problem - you just
plug your phone into your electric car.
When the electricity went down in Hawaii due to high winds, the cell
phones worked for about a day and a half - until the cell towers drained
all their batteries. In the future, the US will have a huge reserve of
stored electricity in millions of electric cars. We'll be better
prepared for power outages.