Monday Roll Call

T'would be nice if we could all still depend on to deliver our words.  My personal preferance tends to be agoraphobic but I have to overcome that.  I am listening to WDCB in digital format as we speak and, unfortunately, I cannot hear any differance from if it were being played live by a band in the corner of my living room.  Once that "land line" hits a certain point within a few miles of your home it travels through the air the same as the cell phone.  Some folks just may never get the knack of using a cell phone.  My DW is one of them.  She somehow turns the phone so she can hear but others cannot hear her if she is not seated while talking.  My first cell phone looked like a military field phone.  I have my voip phone forwarded to my cell phone so I get all calls on my cell phone and never have to worry if I forwarded the phones before I leave home or have to worry about not getting a call.  Even if three or more people call me at the same time those who came in third or later will go to voice mail and if they leave a message it will be in my email inbox which if I wanted to be reached all that consistently I could have sent to my cell phone.  I am emotionally attached to not being attached but if I wanted my Walnut number from my youth I could get it on my voip phone if it were ever not in use.

January 13, 2009

Randy

This is Dave (Chris's husband). Thanks so much for telling me about MagicJack. It looks like a fantastic concept and looks like the easiest thing to install. I personally want quality when I am talking to people. I have 40 years in the phone industry and thought I would fill you in on some information. I do not text message (though Chris will text message) and I will not (unless a new job requires me to) get a Blackberry. Chris and I have three land lines into our house right now. Back in 2001 when I started working from home, we had five land lines into the house since I had to keep business and personal lines separate. That was also back in the days when my computer was hooked up to a land line via dial up (which was one of the five lines). For the record, we have at least 19 (yes nineteen) phones associated with our primary home phone line and our house is only 1,100 square feet. I even have a phone in my shed!  We even had a problem with our house land line the past couple of months but it was totally intermittent (static on the line). I finally called and yes, when they check it, they heard it also. They came to house on January 3rd and guess what, it was crystal clear. Two days later it was bad. They called me and said they saw it. To make a long story short, they changed my pairs. I will admit that AT & T has let the outside plant infrastructure go to pot. The bottom line for me is that land line is the best. Another thing is that almost all connectivity via land land line is via fiber and not microwave. The mountains out west still use microwave but I was totally involved back in the 80's placing Regen huts into the AT&T Long Lines System using fiber optics. Those microwave towers are gone. In fact I wanted to open a theme restaurant in one of those places. They were just about giving the buildings and property away. Today, that is the major carrier (transport) of our voice and data for AT & T (and all of the other land line carriers). To make another point, Chris and I are now able to get U-Verse here at our house. We could not get DSL a few years ago so we went with a Internet service in Palatine. We have a microwave dish on our chimney aimed at Palatine. It is not 24/7 for tech service and we will go down a couple of hours a month. Needless to say, it is when I need it (my e-mail) the most. Regarding cell phones, everybody uses them and loves them but to me they are one step above CB radios or walky talkies. Right now Chris and I are looking at consolidating our communication services into a package but AT & T is not part of AT & T Wireless (even though they are the same stock). We actually get four separate bills a month (Internet, wire line, wireless, cable). The bottom line is that most line line connections go via copper and fiber and not microwave. 

Dave   

Bax to Dave:

Good to hear from you.  I hear you say the microwave towers are gone but I still see them.  Since I was sixteen I have had many mobile jobs where I was dependent on relay towers.  That made the cell phones a wonderful thing for me. I still tend to keep a pocket full of change.  In Houston an SBC tech accidentally disconnected our lines while working in the box.  It took them a month to come reconnect it.  Granted that was an anomaly but my cell phone was the only phone I had then and to tell you the truth I enjoyed it.  I like conversations that are short and to the point unless I am face to face.  Quality with a MagicJack will depend on your computer/dsl set up.  Most folks I call hear no difference but one friend in Houston hears me better if I am on a cell phone.  Go figure.  AT&T here has wanted to roll the cell phone bill in with the land line bill so if you want that you might want to ask again.  I like having them separate.

Bax, yes the towers are still there because they cannot sell them or give them away. They are devoid of equipment. We are looking into bundling our service and are in the beginning stages of investigating U Verse (sp?) and having all of our service with ATT. We will see what happens.

DB