Sonic.net

I would buy this service if it wasn't necessary to have a home phone Pretty much have not had a home phone in the 21st century, so this seems rather silly without a reasonable explanation for this requirement. I real step backwards.

Just wait until another disaster strikes the region and you will wish you did have a landline powered from a CO.

When the plane took out the steel towers in East Palo Alto for about 8 hours, cell towers and Cable TV ran out of juice. The bring backup power theory only works for a couple of outages.
My POTS phone and my DSL worked the entire time (I had a UPS for my network, that I cycled on to check mail and News )

What dragonsclaw said.

Last fall, our house was near one of California's better wild fires (the Bear Fire), and were evacuated for several days (fortunately, nothing bad happened, thanks fire fighters). Last Friday, the incident commander Jake Hess gave a talk about the fire and response to the community, at a local fire station (great turnout, fabulous presentation). One thing that came up over and over: cell phones are not reliable. Lots of residents complained that they never got the reverse-911 evacuation orders on their cell phones, even if they had registered their cell numbers with the local 911 center. Everyone who has a land line got the phone call. Cell coverage in the mountains is already spotty; during the fire it became barely usable due to overloading: cell networks are much less regulated, and are designed for profit optimization during normal use, not for resilience in a crisis. At least we got lucky in that fire, that power didn't have to be cut to the area: When power is out, normal phone systems continue to function (simple phones are powered by the phone wire, and phone switch boxes have batteries that are required to be good for several days, the PUCC regulates that). Cell towers tend to have only minimal batteries to last a few minutes (some have generators).

We ended up never evacuating, by mistake, there was confusion about evacuation orders (we were initially told to stay, and that order was changed too late to leave). During the fire, we had regular landline phone and DSL all the time (and a generator ready to go in case the power goes out), and our cell phones worked great at home (we have phones that can do data and voice over wireless). Away from the house coverage was spotty to non-existing.

Any Californian who does not have a land line, 21st century or not, is making a deliberate personal safety choice. This is fire and earthquake country, like it or not.

By the way, this discussion has no bearing on whether Sonic should offer DSL with or without a phone line.

That's true for the DSL service, but power is needed for the VoIP fiber offering. I'm super pleased with the service, but also wish I could ditch the voice.

Cell reception at my house is not good, so I appreciate the backup phone system. Also, my number is 32 years old, and I like it.

I'm a health professional. Client's have reported sending txts I've never received, or garbled. Moreover it's hard to tell acuity from a text. I've sent texts that have arrived the next day (after the appointment that they called for last minute directions : " Text it to me." I have several ways people can reach me in an Emergency. The best is to call.
Sometimes while speaking, anxious people hear their thoughts and calm themselves vs leaving a 40 paragraph text as the person increases their anxiety.
I have a elderly friend in a rural part of my otherwise suburban county. Cell phones don't work where he is because the City government won't allow them. When he fell, neighbors who check in a couple of days were able to reach him on his land line and get him medical help.

I'm with a Medical Reserve Unit thru FEMA. The word is that in a major disaster that the cell service will go down on purpose, because emergency radio channels are often blocked by cell frequencies that are close to emergency radio. Do you want 911 to respond to your emergency, or send video to Facebook? Landlines are expected to work (We are speaking Earthquake here), while people waste time dialing on non existent cell channels. You could go to the Fire Department, and offer to help, cook food in a shelter, take care of kids if their parents are acting like children.
Everyone who lives in Earthquake Country should follow today the guidelines from Red Cross. They have great preparedness apps, but for use before the disaster.
I gave a preparedness talk a year back, and a fellow said " What's the big deal, the Earthquake is in 30 years?" I reminded him that was said 30 years ago. My disaster kit is duplicated in my car, and office, but the best kit is using your head.
You want every way to call for help, just the way your disaster kit should have 3 ways to make fire (some foods aren't palatable cold).
Daily my modern cell service messes up, but my landlines keep working.

Think of your homephone as a hedge against cellular outages. Mine is Never Rung Once, by the way. Unplublished phone numbers are wonderful, no spammers, no annoying polling calls.

Every once in a while I use it to call out, just to make sure it works.