Bay Area residents outraged over possibly losing landlines: Here's more on effort to save them
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- Опубліковано 10 бер 2024
- Do you still use your landline? The ABC7 News I-team has an update on the push from AT&T to end the service for thousands of Californians. San Mateo County officials are meeting with representatives from the utility to talk about the proposal. abc7ne.ws/4a9obDD
#landlines #att #poweroutage #consumer #technology #politics #sanmateocounty #woodside #abc7news
The California Public Utilities Commission should deny AT&T's request to end landline service. Cell phones are unreliable!!!!
Okay Boomer.
Can they force a business to provide a service or would they purchase the landlines division of at&t and operate it as a public utility?
@@mrviq you will be provided with a wireless landline device to plug your ancient telephones ☎️ to.
@@PhyuckYew i dont want a landline i do well with my mobile device. if service is interrupted then nobody needs to reach me. i just want understanding on why people are trying to force a company to provide a service they dont want to provide
@@mrviq that’s why AT&T is trying to get rid of it. It’s time to move on beyond the copper lines. This old people will not let go of their landlines. Who are they gonna call? Most of their friends are dead and their kids probably don’t wanna talk to them.
When we recently lost cellphone Nation-wide, AT&T told us to use LANDLINES!!! 🤔
Landline phones are important for emergency purposes such as power outages including rural areas where wifi and cellular service is poor.
Having a landline phone to make calls in an emergency is crucial. And California has a lot of natural disasters, like extreme heat, rain, etc. which cause power outages.
They also cause landline outages. The landline "outside plant" is typically over 40 years old. A lot of folks have already given up the landlines so the revenue to maintain/upgrade/replace the landlines just isn't there.
That's reality. Especially in places like Oakland, the reality has to include the dangers telephone workers face when repairing landlines.
@@GilmerJohn The next board metting, I'm gonna suggest AT&T jack up the prices for people who wants to keep their landline. Start charging $99/mo for landline and watch them drop their landlines like flies.
I can bet you the person thought about this does not live in a mountain area and never experienced fire or anything like that.
I like using a landline phone, even some businesses still use landline services for communications with others!
They're likely using voice over IP in some form.
Dont trust AT&T. Eventually, all I had with them was a landline. Each time I cut a service, they raised the price or tacked on another fee. Finally, I was paying about $56 just for a phone line that I couldn't even use to call the next town because I didn't have long distance service. I finally gave them what they wanted - I cancelled my landline. Ugh!
Well, almost half of my landline bill ($46 total) is for fees and taxes. Some are also charged to cell, but some aren't.
I regret to inform you...AT&T is the best out there. They do know their stuff, their techs are great as is c/s. Even among all the cell phone services, with the poss. exception of theirs. T-Mble is nightmare-ish for c/s and billing.
We plan on raising your landline price to $99/mo and $50 if you're an AT&T mobile subscriber. Great that you dropped your landline.
stop privatizing essential services. Because private companies are in business to make money. Not to provide essential services.
What the hell are you talking about. No shit that private companies are in business to make money. Government is business to fuck you over and are trash. You want socialism move to North Korea.
Government is no better. Both are corrupt and self serving that rely on funds from the populace. O e is thru choice. The other is thru force. Without taxes, they cannot do squat. Also add in the massive wasteful spending to justify yearly budgets, they are no better.
It was privatized decades ago
The North American phone network has largely been privately owned from the start. I know there are some areas where the phone system was owned by the government, but that's the minority.
The government is?😂😂😂
Many places still don’t get reliable cell service. If my cell phone wasn’t hooked up through the internet I wouldn’t get ANY phone service in most of my house and I live in a regular Bay Area neighborhood. I’m not in a rural area. In fact, I can get TV stations all the way in Monterey with just a rabbit ears TV antenna.
As long as AT&T burdens the cost of an interface between the fiber network and the copper lines within your home, I don't really see a need for POTS service anymore. In fact, during an extended power outage, phone service could actually last a lot longer before those lines go dead due to lower energy use. Bottom line is there needs to be a real time grid connection, because wireless service is nonexistent during extreme weather events.
Is the mobile infrastructure ready to fully take over? No, not by a long shot.
I remember how after the Loma P. quake of 89, though we had no power for days, the landline phone still worked. The same happened on 9-11 in NYC, with all the cell towers down.
Don't forget about Hurricane Sandy, which flooded the copper cables in NYC, which then had to be replaced with fibre.
Yeah, news stations all know that earthquakes can topple or knock out cell towers for weeks, yet they fail to bring up that point during this story.
'upgrading to newer technologies' is not really an upgrade if you cannot call 911 when your super duper high-tech smartphone has no signal.
My AT&T landline went down yesterday (I'm in the L.A. area). I called on another phone, they took the report, and said it should be fixed in three days. Maybe that's their plan. Make landlines unreliable, so customers won't miss them. Their plan is to eventually rip out all those wire pairs going from the central office to customers' homes. In place is VoIP, internet, and the like, although not reliable as landlines during emergencies.
A public utility should not be able to yank our landlines. What happens if all the cell sites go down? Zero communication? What about a landline for your home computer? This proposal is criminal.
A land line for the computer requires a dial-up modem. People do not have dial-up modems anymore. Laptop computers are no longer manufactured with dial-up modems.
Didn’t AT&T just tell people to use a landline when their cell service went down fairly recently?
I live in North Fort Worth and have lived in the same home since 2003 and if it wasn’t for my land line I wouldn’t have any cell service in my home. I live less than one mile from Hwy35w,the major North/South artery in this side of town and there’s a cell tower right off 35 but I can’t get better than one bar on my phone. I have complained to AT&T for 20 years but they do nothing. I hate AT&T but our HOA has some deal with AT&T and a cable company that keeps any other competition out of our subdivision.
Isn't it HOA the evil doer?
Offices need landlines...
Please hold.
If AT&T gets their way, it will be VOIP phones in offices or no phones at all.
Most offices are VoIP nowadays
Actually, many have moved to Voice over IP (VoIP) either with their own PBX or hosted PBX, which means it's "in the cloud". I was installing VoIP PBXs in businesses over 15 years ago. More recently, I was setting up customers on hosted PBX.
Lol
I work in the transportation industry. Dispatchers and call-takers use a VOIP software system. Headsets connect to the computers they are logged into. Small businesses and homeowners can use a service like Ooma.
To the surprise of no one, what is left unmentioned is the _real_ reason AT&T wants to drop the landlines: Money. The landlines cost money to maintain & AT&T doesn't want to spend it. Instead they'd much rather only do cellphone service (for which they charge an arm and a leg, both for the phone and the service) rather than a simple landline-service, which costs the customer a fraction as much. I mean, all that stuff at the beginning about the lady with the antique phone & all, that's nice, but not really relevant to the issue. So...good job once again to ABC7 News for missing the main point at issue altogether.
@@Jack_Russell_BrownYeah, I know; my dad worked for Western Electric from 1946 until he retired in the '80s (right around the time Bell Telephone was being broken up under antitrust laws, to eventually become AT&T.)
If no wifi. . No phone call. We need to vote for that one
Don't forget about the thousands of businesses and government agencies still uses landlines.
No, they don't. Just because you see a wired phone doesn't mean they use landline. Most are migrated to VoIP now. In fact, many of the phones are connected via Ethernet, not the 2-wire "voice" line.
I haven't had a landline or cable TV since 2008 and I don't miss them at all and probably saved tens of thousands of dollars in the meantime
They should 100% be available to people.
Landline phone power is supplied by the central office and CO has battery and power generators backup. Theoretically your landline will never goes down as long as the CO has power going even your house loses the power from the grids.
Tell that to people in NYC during Hurricane Sandy, where those generators got flooded, along with the copper cables.
If a major Earthquake knocks out cell phone towers, even those in urban locations will need landlines to call for EM services.
AT&T raised my business landline monthly fee from $140 to $336, forcing me to port my business number over to Ooma at $17/month.
I contacted the FCC and filed a complaint about the overbilling and they contacted the President's office at AT&T.
The lady I talked to agreed to refund me $895 for the three months I had to pay.
We'll see if I receive the check or have to continue to do battle.
I'm glad you reported it to the FCC, and I hope many people read your comment.
Maybe you can join in on tomorrow's Public Utilities Commission's virtual meeting. (On 3/19/24)
Going to have to figure it out because POTS is dead. It is unreasonable to expect any company to continue the maintenance on it, for the peanuts they charge per line.
POTS is actually fairly expensive compared with other technologies. For the amount of monthly savings switching to cellular/voip, you could buy a generator and a bunch of fuel. AT&T landline service is like a minimum of $40 per month, for that rate I could get a satellite phone.
We are in far rural northern CA - and get 3-5 power outages (of 1-5 days each) every winter. We do have a generator, but that doesn't make the already sketchy cell phone coverage any better - especially since they have removed a very important cell tower in the past year or so. The ONLY reason we keep a landline is for these emergencies. It's an expensive but important "luxury" that costs us more than our cell phone coverage (also by ATT).
This is an important conversation. I'm retired, but I don't worry about not having a landline because I live in an urban area. But if I lived in a remote rural area, I would demand that they not take the landline away. It just makes sense.
Per earlier news reports, an Earthquake can cause cell phones to be useless by knocking out cell phone towers. Then there's the potential for terror -ists to do the same.
An amateur radio license is easy to get and that should allow communication at any time. Amateur radio clubs regularly coordinate with local fire and police offering emergency communications among other volunteer services. I got my amateur license in 1992. My amateur radio came to my rescue one time when my car got stranded in a remote area miles from the nearest town.
So is this for residential only no more land lines? What about businesses?
same
Many businesses have moved to some form of voice over IP.
Don't let them do it to you from Shore to Shore !
Hate to break it to you but even in the 50s a large portion of cross country phone lines were relayed via microwave antenna relay towers get you're facts straight before you put out misinformation
The thing that buggs me about no land lines anymore is no faxing documents!
That's not true. I am able to fax using VoIP box. No landline.
It cost a fortune to maintain the copper network, it’s already shut down in other countries. The central office uses enormous amounts of electricity. Ideally everyone moves to fiber
I retired from ATT 17 years ago. When I first started as a residential installer when it was called Pacific Telephone, I was informed that residential landlines was mandated by the PUC and that it was offered at a loss. ATT, which was the backbone of the company, just took the losses as the business side made up the difference.
Fast forward many decades and I don't understand why people still use landlines from their local phone company. I switched over to VOIP phone service via the internet a long time ago. Everyone has internet connections. My home VOIP service costs me $3/month with all the bells and whistles included.
I work for a hospital and we use landlines. It doesn't make sense to cut them. we can't rely on wifi and that crap.
They're likely voice over IP phones, not traditional phone lines.
That is NOT a candlestick 'phone.
A power outage is one thing, but some people simply do not want the constant exposure to the microwave radiation. I have a "land line" where I live, but unfortunately, it is provided by Spectrum via a cable modem (because there is no longer a traditional land line service in my area), so on the event of a power outage, my ethernet goes down and I do not have telephone service.
WHAT A LAME STORY! No mention of WHY AT&T wants to do this? REALLY? WTF?
My landline went out twice in a local power outage in San Diego County, even though I have battery backups for the house. The Central Office didn't have battery backup. So we dumped it.
This is happening all over the country. Also the talk of getting rid of AM radio in cars. We must still have landlines if and when the internet and cell service is attracted. We as a country will be standing with our pants down. The new ways aren't always the best. You will need a CB radio like the truckers have
whenever it rained, our land line would fail: the wires in our neighborhood (not the wire to our house) were so stretched out and the housing cracked that it was unusable. It was not maintained. We gave up on it over a decade ago.
Our landline is operating through Magic Jack, and it's staying, as we've had for 10+ years. However, it's connected to our UPS battery pack, which includes our desktops units and printer. When the power goes out, we have service for 1.5 hours. If we turn off our computers nightly, and then lose power, we can get a few hours of internet service to include the landline. Once that goes, then it's our smart phones via the hot spot.
0:47 That rotary dial is from a Western Electric 500 telephone set.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, we lost our landline service for about 5 days. Never lost cell service.
WTh. People still use land lines?
Many alarm systems also use landlines to notify the security company and/or police.
Sounds like the owners of those alarms need to get with the times
@@KILLKING110Shouldn't be a problem. We'll have you pay for it. That's why socialism is SO GREAT!
Those alarm systems are switching over to cellular technology.
1:03 Why?
Then her generator is not wired correctly.
Maybe get a CB radio!
I’m sure those complaining know how to use those
My primary phone is a land-line with an answering machine, which is great for screening your calls. Everyone I know has been instructed to speak into the machine and I'll pick up if I'm home. Ergo, I never have to deal with solicitors, scammers or election-season calls. I don't want to give that up. Plus the emergency aspect for maintaining them is paramount.
5/14/2024 a priority mail 12.60 oz package from Atlanta arrived in Leland, Ms received at originating site 30058 05/06/2024 . The more automated the more delays. Now I wonder if it's all by design for later plausible causes in lost mail or absentee ballots .🤔
When Andrew hurricane in Florida I was without electricity for 2 weeks! Thanks God I had a lineland telephone that allows me to connect with the outside world! Now that I am older I have seriously considered to get a lineland service again because of the constant threats of hurricane in Florida! Taking this option out will endanger the safety of older people living by themself! Unfortunately at&t has monopolized this service!🤬🙏🇺🇸🌏
Dude, if there's a bomb in the area, and you use your cell phone, the frequency from that phone call can trigger the bomb if it has remote detonation capabilities. Lol!
That's a myth that Hollywood puts out so quite quoting movies because they don't care about the truth
@@maidenthe80sla you were so eager to embarrass me that you completely misinterpreted my comment... You talk about the "amount" of frequency, yet I'm saying that if you use it in general, you risk the chance of triggering the bomb. it doesn't matter how many they're are, the fact that you're using that form of communication proves that you have a chance of triggering it. If you don't understand what I'm saying feel free to continue berating me and my lack of intelligence. You won't remember this interaction week/months/years from now anyway. Happy trails friend :-)
AT&T will be asking customers in the event of fires please send smoke signals , for any other calls please use a Bullroarer
Many people with long term landlines have paid ATT over 5 figures for service. They barely maintained the technology letting it decay. What were they paying for ? Fiber / cellular. Look at ATT profits, it is in the Billions.
Hate to break it to you but internet over copper is so slow that even cellphone Hotspot are faster and everything is going fiber optic as it's not only cheaper to maintain but quite often is crazy fast since you know it's the speed of light
@@KILLKING110 hate to break it to you, att or comcast doesn't have fiber or cable within 20 miles of my home. Neighbors are lucky to have DSL or private cable where available. DSL will go with landlines. ( which still works in a power outage ). Cell reception is spotty, parts of my land don't get a signal. They try to sell an infrastructure that don't even have. The main alternative is Hughes or Elon$$$ for Internet. Rural connectivity is pathetic.
Can land lines be repurposed for emergency use only?
There is no added benefit to converting land lines for emergency use only. It still requires the same switching equipment at the central office.
This just in - people outraged over being unable to take their horses and buggies on the highway. And some people are upset over no longer being able to easily buy buggy whips. Old people don't accept change well. Landline phones go out during natural hazard events too. Landlines require infrastructure that someone has to pay for. The cost used to be spread out over all the customers. Now there are very few customers left to spread the cost over.
We are going backwards not forward. Only a few things are getting better for very few.
~ Im Outraged Too .... I want Rotary Dial Back I miss it, it reminds me of the day when I was young and answered the phone...
Starlink internet service might be a better solution for folks living in rural areas opposed to depending on century old technology that is being phased out.
I think people don't have the money to pay for the expensive equipment. Plus monthly fee $120 - $150.
Fees currently collected to subsidize analog phone lines should be redirected to fund newer technology.
Starlink needs power too.
Seems some of you might not be young, healthy and self reliant enough to be living in rural areas.
@@matt5539 Maybe not good for you but this story is about a family in Woodside, CA. Think big $$$.
Many people who think they have a "land line" are probably using Cable or fiber optics, not copper pots (plain old telephone service).
Here in our NY area Verizon stopped using copper a long time ago.
If power goes out, our fiber or Cable will stop as soon as the battery goes dead.
It's either a separate Analog Telephone Adapter connected to the router or an ATA interface built into the router or the fiber Online Network Terminal.
I haven't had a traditional landline in over 15 years. Instead, my phone is provided by my cable TV company as part of the TV & Internet bundle. Works fine. According to what I heard recently, only about 20% of people still have a home phone and I bet many of those aren't still using the traditional service. That old phone network is fading fast, so how long are the companies supposed to maintain it, with declining users, especially with it being such a low revenue service? There are a lot of cheap VoIP services, for a fraction of what the phone companies charge for the old network. In my case, it isn't even a separate cost item on my bill.
We need land lines. Why weren't those that just use their cells charged a fee to keep them in place? In an emergency the lines would be used on their behalf even if they do not have access to a landline phone. All businesses and entities that have their own phone system have an emergency phone which is on landlines.
Got rid on a hard line when Verizon started charging me 90 a month.
Already, Wrote my letter against this.
First they stopped allowing us to ride horses through town. Then they took away our blimp air service -- the only way to fly. I miss my savings account passbook. I miss calling to book airline tickets. I miss travel agents. I miss writing letters to overseas to reserve lodging.
Who the heck lives in San Fransico anymore. I moved to Texas. So cheap here in Houston. Have a 6 bed mansion for the price of a studio in San Fran.
screw the elites in woodside build your own
US post office stopped Telegram service, Analog TV transmission gave way to Digital. If no one is using it, it is time to say goodbye.
The screw safety aspect right?
This is quite different class action suits will be started and the most prestigious law firm in California capable of filing State and Federal actions will running the show. The government is not a business entity and allowing this could spread like an epidemic to other States.
Ah, yes, play the safety card. Shutting off landlines has been going on for several decades; it will only continue.
press 69 if your ATT phone turned into a paperweight last month.
6:11AM❤
Will AT&T provide free universal cellular access to all California citizens?
AHHHH YES... 29 YEARS AND THE PHONE TO PROVE IT....... THATS CERTAINLY A 29 YEAR OLD PHONE..... LOL
How do they have a generator and not have power to the modem/cable/internet? I do, whether the power is out or not.
They may have a generator but the service provider's equipment may not have power. Cable not a good option where I live so I have DSL. I power my house with solar backup during a power outage including the modem. However, the Internet will still be down because the DSLAM on the street does not have power.
@@muskrat3291 I have 2 Powerwalls. There is no situation where anything stops working. A backup generator should be wired to the house and do the same thing. Something doesn't add up. I live 15 minutes from Woodside. It isn't remote at all.
And add it a UPS.
Low tech is the answer in the event of disasters... learn how to send smoke signals.
Lost my landline in 1999
Satellite phone....
Just make them pay for it
What? Why do you need wi-fi to use your mobile phone?
BTW, cell towers have backup power and will work even in a power failure.
Here's the real reason your landline doesn't leave an electronic Trail for law enforcement to follow. You're not pinging off the towers you don't have your tracking device in your car with you or if you're riding a bus you're not in your car so they haven't the ability to track your vehicle they're going to track your phone. But if you ride a bus and don't have a cell phone you vanished all of a sudden for a long period of time you're not leaving an electronic Trail until you use your EBT card that's a big electronic Trail for them. Man who has a failure to appear in court warrant uses his EBT card then when he comes out of the grocery store immediately easily face ground into the pavement and law enforcement with machine guns drawn at him because he's left an electronic Trail they're following. It's all about their electronic Trails so they can sit behind computers to do a law enforcement rather than riding around a patrol car staring out the window looking for bad guys this way they're not in the crossfire of the bad guys they sit in some air conditioned office building and say oh there's a ping on this person or there's a camera we can see are gunfire sensor detector detects some gunfire. That way they can show up after the fact. Electronic safety. But sometimes you don't want to be followed by armed killers as they they're called in England your neighbor calls armed Killers to come to your door because your music is too loud. Because American cops have guns. In some Nations have police that don't have guns so armed Killers don't show up at their door when their music's too loud.
Time to move!
They lie my landline was cut off and when I move they did not reconnect the service which I had for years they made these choices with our knowledge also they stated you don’t have the option to keep your landline because it’s no longer available you would have to use digital that is what I was told from their service representative unless they are lying as well! my question is why it doesn’t make sense to use a service that could go out at anytime ! all you here from these massive companies like them is excuse don’t even get me started on their nonexistent crappy customer service where it stationed in a foreign country and they barely speak English! And you get the runaround and can’t get any ones to solve issues if you have one. The other question you have to ask why they want to get rid of everybody’s landline phones what’s the purpose behind it?!
CBs help
I want a horse and buggy
Woodside? Buy some serious backup lithium batteries. You guys in woodside are the top half of the 1%. I'm shedding crocodile tears.
Woodside, median home price $4.5 million.
Can the government mandate to companies what it must give away?
The government may subsidize services.
I see a lot of confusion between capitalism and socialism. The US is a capitalist country.
In true socialism, companies would be owned by the people. USSR, North Korea, and Cuba are examples of socialism.
The USSR failed because of it's socialist economy. Capitalism is much like "Evolution"; good ideas survive, bad ideas fail.
Those are communist countries. For socialist, look at Sweden.
I do believe landlines are a national necessity, but this is supply and demand. The carriers should be obligated, and paid to maintain landlines. Shortsighted America again. Cellular service should be in conjunction with landlines. Where's congress? Surcharge users.
Who's going to pay to maintain a service that most people no longer use?
@James_Knott I put it in my comment. A surcharge on users. The fact that it's a safety net in case of electrical outages or some unknown catastrophe, makes it in the national interest. I guess until you've been without power for a couple of days, you wouldn't understand.
@@jerrymartin3965 That will be quite a surcharge given that even home phone VoIP service is a fraction of the cost of the old network. So, you're saying people will have to pay several times what they're currently paying, just so some people can still have an obsolete service?
BTW, it's not just a pair of wires that will have to be maintained, but also the old telephone exchanges they connect to.
The government needs to take over landlines, this is ridiculous.
Privileged Woodside
Nobody feels sorry for you when millions are struggling
Democrats dont care about anybody.
Sue A T & T
use ham radios
AT&T-=Americas Thieves and Thugs
-Archie Bunker.
Haven't used a landline in 14 years (2010). just use a Cell phone and thats it.
Cell doesn't work during earthquake and fire disaster.
@@lancetruong4957 Landline theoretically could cut out as well.
@@lancetruong4957 only had an issue like once with getting connection with my cell phone in like 14 years.
Lol, whaat
Bye Bye!
Please clarify that all the outrage are from those over 50. Everyone else can’t even imagine paying for a useless landline.
What about hundreds of thousands of businesses and government agencies still using landlines on a daily basis?
I'm over 70 and can't imagine paying for a landline.
@@NextNate03 Many business are moving away from landlines. The company I work for has zero landlines. We now use soft phones.
I'm 70 and am not outraged. I know they can't keep maintaining an obsolete service that fewer and fewer people are using. My home phone is a VoIP service provided by my cable TV company as part of my TV & Internet bundle.
@@NextNate03 Most of them have moved to some VoIP service. I was installing VoIP PBXs over 15 years ago and more recently setting up businesses on hosted PBX.
It is NOT about safety if it was AT&T would not be making an end run around the public who pays for this & be going directly to the law makers to get out from under their obligations TO SAFETY!!!! THIS IS A MONEY THING!!!
Save the Land lines .