Comments on: An Appreciation of The “Home Phone”

By: Jamie

Jamie — Fri, 31 Aug 2012 02:40:00 +0000

I have to comment on this. There is a major (and expected and accepted) latency (auditory) in cell phones that land lines just don’t have (unless of course you call from landline to overseas landline). Landlines usually have such a low latency that it feels like the person you are speaking to is in the same room as you. I don’t expect cell phones to ever come close to that. I miss landlines.. I still have one but every call out is usually to a person with a cell phone that no longer has a landline.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 01:27:00 +0000

Thanks for commenting. I hope to be writing a lot more soon, but travel keeps stopping me…

By: Doug Mehus

Doug Mehus — Sun, 17 Jun 2012 22:02:00 +0000

Oh, that’s in part what I wanted to say. I sense that, going forward, the home phone and mobile phone will sort of ‘merge’ whereby you have one number that essentially can be forwarded to your home handset or to your cell phone or even your e-mail address on the fly (via phone, Internet, text message, etc.). This already exists to a certain extent with services such as Google Voice and even “call forwarding”, to a lesser extent, but I suspect they’ll be more tightly integrated and it’ll hit mass adoption. Plus, that aspect of Google Voice is limited only to the U.S.

Cheers,
Doug

By: Doug Mehus

Doug Mehus — Sun, 17 Jun 2012 21:56:00 +0000

John, it’s been awhile since I’ve commented in this space (many years in fact) as, like others, I migrated to other technology and so-called social media blogs (i.e., TechCrunch for one) but with TechCrunch in utter disarray, I find myself a bit of an Internet nomad (which is about right, if you think about it, as that is what the Internet is).

Anyway, I finally got around to re-reading – and now commenting on – this insightful post. I can definitely say that we still maintain a home phone (albeit of the VoIP variety provided by Shaw Communications, which doesn’t work in the event of a power outage but thanks to local number portability in Canada now, has allowed us to maintain the same number we’ve had since the mid-1980′s) as our primary phone. It’s cheap and reliable like you said, except in our case like in the aforementioned power outages. Plus, why do I need to talk on the phone when I’m “out and about”? That’s what the phone is for at work and at home.

I had a couple other points I wanted to mention but as it’s been a few weeks have mostly forgot them. So, cancel that. Anyway, I mostly wanted to “check-in”.

Cheers,
Doug

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 04:18:00 +0000

Great story.
Where are the lasting artifacts now?

By: jdubya_az

jdubya_az — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 04:15:00 +0000

I had a mustard yellow dialer with about 20 feet of cord to the phone jack and 10ft of coiled line for the headset. Got it from my parents when they bought a summer home in the sticks back in the early eighties (1984 for all you historicals…). I had it until about 2003, when the Mrs thought it was time to get some sort of P.O.S. hand phone.

I got me another one, but really missed the first. It was like a P-47 of phones. Heavy, took a lot of crap, got beat up, drop from two stories, thrown, and subject to rain, snow, and desert heat of Arizona. Also, a psycho bitch ex-girlfriend who tried to pull the phone from the jack. Did not work, but I did use it to encourage her to leave pretty quick…

I miss that phone.

By: Steve

Steve — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 20:05:00 +0000

Another concept attached that you touched on is the concept of a shared identity for the family. The home address is a similar shared location for communication that’s been broken apart somewhat by email. I’ve tried setting up combined a combined email address and phone number (via Google Voice forwarding) for my family in the past, but with little success. I don’t know that the world really wants to call “The Smiths” anymore (did they ever?).

What I think would be REALLY interesting is services that facilitated modeling this shared identity. What songs do “Dick and Jane” want to listen to right now?, for example.

By: William Mougayar

William Mougayar — Wed, 30 May 2012 12:10:00 +0000

Exactly. One of my 2 home land phone lines recently has been down for the past 2 weeks, and we didn’t miss it. I had it in my office, but I’m realizing now it’s been useless because I’m taking most of my calls on the mobile device anyways, and I have a skype tel#. That’s it….B Bye land line.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 29 May 2012 17:57:00 +0000

Now, Kelly, all you have to do is create a platform for us to innovate on top of!

By: AT&T Home Phone

AT&T Home Phone — Tue, 29 May 2012 17:28:00 +0000

Hi there, this is Kelly on behalf of AT&T and I wanted to thank you for your advocacy of the home phone. We also see the benefits of having home phone service. From the times when your cell phone isn’t accessible to emergency situations, the home phone provides peace of mind in a household. Power is out? No problem. With a home phone from us, you’re still connected. At the end of the day, we like to think of them as a security blanket with a dial tone.