[Boatanchors] WAS Goodies NOW Bell

[Rob Atkinson]

On Sat, Apr 11, 2015 at 8:52 PM,  <manualman at juno.com> wrote:
> I'm not sure what you mean about "people north of New York City". Sandy
> turned west in Southern New Jersey (near Atlantic City). While the winds
> were high (it was a Category 3 storm), the more devastating problem was
> the storm surge of water that buried a lot of areas in and around NYC,
> Long Island, coastal CT, and some areas along the Hudson River with many
> feet of water. This killed a lot of electrical service for millions of
> people for many days.

Yes and many of those nice little batteries in homes that were there
for the modern fiber VOIP junk they want everyone to have (because it
is cheap for them!) crapped out.

> There are still lots of simple cell phones available. My wife has a cell
> phone that has numbered buttons, no apps, no whizzy screen, no text, no
> video, can't play games, etc. The only difference between this phone and
> a regular phone is after she dials the number, she has to press "send".
> When she wants to shut the phone off or hang up, she holds down "End".
> There's no rocket science here. It's about as simple as you can get.


Oh no, there is another _major_difference:  Cellphones have audio
quality that is as good or a bit worse than slopbucket.

In other words, they sound like crap.  Now, have an 85 year old try to
 understand someone on one.  They have confusing latency that causes
one to never know when he is speaking at the right time.  That NEVER
happens with landline.  Every time I use my cellphone, which is as
little as possible, I feel like I am in a slopbucket QSO with the two
of us using VOX.  Landline however, simply works, and works well the
way a phone was meant to work.  I have had cellphone calls that were
so bad, I had the caller get on a REAL phone and call me later at my
home or office so we can have a normal civilized conversation, instead
of the insanity of a serious conversation in the middle of a
supermarket.

Back in the 1970s, the American phone system was the envy of the
world.  Crapouts were rare. You could pick up a handset and direct
dial to anyone in the U.S. with a phone and the call went through.
What we have now is some kind of "system" to be charitable, that seems
like a design right out of the sales staff at Best Buy.

73

Rob
K5UJ