Re:F.C.C. Is Expected to Propose Regulating the Internet as ...
by cheald on Monday February 02, 2015 @05:48PM
(#8987616)
The landline option I had previously was serviced by my cable company. If my internet was out, so was my landline, despite it not being VOIP. At my previous residence, it was serviced by the local phone company, and ran through a multiplexing box which plugged into my house power. Both that option and my cable modem have battery backups which continue to function in a power outage, but once that's gone, no more service.
That leaves only VOIP provider outages as a concern, and I've yet to experience one of those in a few years.
However, your VOIP will not work during a power outage, during an internet outage, or any other time the VOIP company's servers are down.
Landlines work during power outages, during internet outages, and they provide around 5 nines of uptime (that's less than 6 minutes of downtime a year).
Those are the things your $35 a month buys you. How important that reliability is to you generally depends on your health. I know more than a few folks who would never give up their landline, because they have medical conditions which depend on reliable access to 911.