Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for March 22, 2015

Until technology improves so that signals from airport control towers don’t set off wireless home alarms within an amazingly wide radius of an airport, I will keep my landline so I can maintain a home alarm system. Most of my neighbors who installed wireless home security systems have given up on them because you can be fined for repeated false alarms in many cities…

And if you live in hurricane country, you learn quickly that cell towers are one of the first parts of the infrastructure to be destroyed. Underground phone lines, on the other hand, can allow you to call for help. (Also ham radios, but fewer people have those now…)

A land line will almost always work when the power goes out because the phone companies have banks of batteries for the backup power supply for the backup generators as their primary backup power supply.And since the system has be designed for the highest levels of usage, which is always Mother’s Day, you’ll almost always get an instant dial tone, even in the worst emergencies.Cellphone networks can’t do that, as they expect you to occasionally move from cell to cell.And no cellphone can match a quality landline phone in sound quality. Nothing can match an old Western Electric phone.

…and data plans are money pits…

If you’re ever put on an at-home heart monitor you have to phone the results over a landline to your doctor every night. You cannot do it on a cellphone.

The real reason he keeps the land line is that it would be a huge mistake to give Danae a cellphone.

I do have a cell for emergencies while traveling. (It’s a ‘dumb’ phone; I don’t want to text or surf the net while driving). Inevitably, whenever I need to call the office to tell them I’m stuck in traffic, the battery is low…

A land line is good for making your cell phone ring so you can find it……

Yes, I’d miss it if we lost our twisted pair.

ook ..ook…oook….just another political robo call..

Did anyone know that “The Stimulus Bill” included a provision to bring internet access to rural families? Each household that was affected only cost us $340,000 each.

A bargain, right? /sarcoff

… but he has a cordless “land line”.

finally cut the cord here in the suburb of a major metropolitan city – I save $80/month, have the convenience of always having my phone with me, can block the spam calls, and after three years have had no problems. if one wants to find problems and disadvantages, he or she can find them in having a car instead of a horse and buggy, too. :-)

Reliable? True, power outages take out cell phone towers – but most landline phones these days plug into 110V, so if the power goes out they’re as useless as a cell phone that’s out of range of a working tower.

i don’t have a problem listening to the neighbor’s cell phone conversations. when i’m outside in the yard, they have the volume up and talk so loud, i get both sides of the conversation. otherwise why would i care.

This is even more amusing because Rat did a thing on phones in Pearls, as well. So 2 strips have loads of comics reminiscing!

I have texting and data “turned off” on my phone plan – I can easily “turn them on” if wanted. I only connect by wireless signal. My bill is $18.06 monthly for 500 minutes ($15 before taxes and fees). I know I’ll be without a phone in a disaster/emergency but gave up the landline due to cost and moving around so often.

Lets see now, who was it who used that accent (ook, ook)? Danae her paleontologic history a little bit off. Question, Is that a pay phone?

To the best of my knowledge all landline facilities are run off of battery banks and the majority have backup generators that come into use during long (several days) power failures. If you have a primitive (no features) phone that runs off the phone line you are pretty much immune to power failures (although overhead wires will still come down in a storm). Few new cell sites have backup batteries or generators and many of those that do have backup power have it by virtue of being installed at older (pre-cellular) sites.

I live “out West” where there is no cell service – I also have an old rotary dial phone as it’s the only one that works when the power goes out – which also happens “out West” !!!

And, I just realized the phone she has is cordless, so if power is out, so is the phone. That one anyway. Always keep a corded phone handy.

How timely. I just ordered my first cell phone with the intent of dumping my land line. I find the idea of being in a home without a good old, reliable land-line to be a little frightening because of police and fire issues. If I lose the phone I am in a bad way until I can get a new phone. Any ideas on solving this problem other an not losing the phone?Excluding the cost of the phone, I will be paying under $25 per month which includes damage insurance. I live west of Chicago so there are more cell towers than Starbucks and Walmarts combined. When I go biking in a rural area, I can get to a top of a hill and see beautiful farm fields with cell towers in them for as far as the eye can see.

If the phone was truly worthy of “oog ooog” it would be black, with a rotary dial, and connected to the wall (not the wireless receiver shown).

I have a land line for everyone I don’t want to talk to. … kinda like my yahoomail account for spam

I think having a “dumb phone” would be a bad thing since “dumb” means unable to talk. My cell phone is a “stupid phone.”

Or you could just unplug it for a while.

As I read these comments, I must say:I miss the clarity of analog phones, both landline and cellular……Digital just doesn’t cut it for me, but I use it because that’s what’s easy to deal with and what I have at the moment.My analog bag phone was clear as a bell in the basement of a steel and concrete building with no repeaters.

Note that VOIP service from the cable company, or DSL from the phone company, are NOT the same tech as the old-fashioned “land line” (even if you’ve plugged an old-fashioned analog handset into them), and will NOT work without a source of power for the modem. Analog land lines work without power because they date from a time when the phone industry was regulated for the public good, which included being able to function in emergencies. Now that the industry’s deregulated, its requirements are determined by the Almighty Market, which prioritizes operation during emergencies way down the list below cost-cutting and fancy features.

Landlines generally keep working when earthquakes/tornadoes/etc knock out the cell towers…

Cordless phones are ubiquitous. The base plugs into the 110 and the handset is cordless. The advantage is I have three handsets scattered about the house. When the power fails, I have a corded set already plugged in.

Did Wiley collaborate with Stephan Pastis (Pearls before Swine) this week? Odd to have two popular comics about land lines in one week.

I will never give up my land line until they pry it from my cold dead hands! Sometimes other people’s protests (thank you Charlton) are the proper level of defiance!

Actually, my cell is more reliable than my landline. Squirrels don’t eat cell phone wires and the wind doesn’t blow trees down on them, and I don’t have to deal with AT&T. And people who call me on my cell are usually people I actually want to talk to.

Nice Western Mountain Bluebird :-)

I have both landline and cell. The cell is used in emergency as a back up

My 4-yr old granddaughter loves to play with our land line phone. She thinks it’s fascinating.

Some kids don’t know how to use a rotary phone……..

I’m surprised nobody else thought they saw a Terry Pratchett/Librarian tribute in all the “ooks.”

excuse me…does anybody have a match?? I need a light…

AT+T’s ‘Uverse’ (TV/phone/internet) that they market heavily to us has those in our neighborhood, and a couple years ago, when wind brought down Edison’s power here for several days, they had to bring out noisy little Diesel generators for each box; it was about the only sound on the whole block, too.The cable phone we had before that had a little UPS box in the basement to cover a few hours.TANSTAAFL; There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. We’re not there yet!Oh, and because TV/internet and phone are under different rules (unless Net Neutrality does actually get done, we can hope!) the halves of the company don’t actually talk to each other. We can pay the bill Thursday, OK? OK! TV/internet gets shut off Saturday, boom.

“Landlines” are only effective if they are hard-wired POTS lines (copper) – the lines offered by most Internet services, especially cable-based, are not POTS service and therefore will fail when power fails. Unfortunately, because more people are dropping the service, there will come a day when it is no longer cost-effective for phone companies to maintain them.