Lost my DSL today

Posts: 80 · Posted: Tue Apr 25, 2006 12:50 am Post subject: Lost my DSL today

So I am trying to get on a conference call today and suddenly my Instant Messenging client drops. My Vonage business phone is down, my Vonage home phone is down and I'm off the Internet. I work from home so I'm dead in the water.

I still have to get on that call so I grab the BellSouth line that I'm forced to maintain to keep DSL. No dialtone. There has been a cable cut somewhere down the road and the whole neighborhood is out.

I'm forced to reflect on how rare this happens and how completely unafraid I was to be without 911 service. Of course, we have mobile phones and I made my call using my work mobile. Had the need arisen, I could have called 911 but they wouldn't know where I was - I'd have to tell them! Living on the edge to be sure.

I am happy to report that both Vonage lines did exactly as they were told and failed over to the mobile phones. It was an annoyance to be sure but a totally survivable one.

Posts: 6 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 08, 2005 Posts: 6

If the copper line went down you would not have had a copper line phone either...

Posts: 80 · Posted: Tue Apr 25, 2006 8:35 am Post subject:

I did lose copper since I lost BellSouth Dialtone and that is what caused all of my problems. That was the point of my post, I guess.

Posts: 1715 · Posted: Tue Apr 25, 2006 12:33 pm Post subject:

There is no "reliable" method anymore... Landlines go out frequently in my area due to construction and phone co screwups, cell has its own set of issues:

Cingular service restored after 11 hour outage

LEE COUNTY: You may have experiencing difficulties making phone calls on Wednesday. A Cingular Wireless fiber line was cut, causing voice and data services to be interrupted in north and west Florida for several hours. Because the Cingular lines were down, many land line phone lines were busier than normal.

After being out for eleven hours, Cingular service was restored.
(http://www.nbc-2.com/articles/readarticle.asp?articleid=6729&z=3&p=)

I have several different paths & providers, just in case something like this happens. Came in handy during the hurricanes, where I was able to just re-patch the phones & devices to whatever services were still functional. Landline service was down for 7-14 days this past hurricane, depending on where you were. Cell service was hit-or-miss, and Vonage was unaffected (as long as you could find a way to connect).

Your experience with the lost POTS line is something that most people forget -- landlines DO fail regularly, we just don't notice it. Even 911 call centers have phone line failures. There's no large "Verizon Forum" where people post problems with their landlines. Earlier this year, Sprint (long distance/landline carrier, not sure 'bout wireless) corrupted their number portability tables, so anyone who had ever ported their # to any phone co (cell, landline, VoIP,etc) was unreachable by customers who used Sprint.