[BC] Vonage (etc) vs copper dial line

[Scott Fybush]

Rich Wood wrote:
> ------ At 08:54 AM 1/26/2008, Dave Dunsmoor wrote: -------
> 
>> TELCO still supplies DC from the CO to run phone sets, but most
>> people have electronic phones that quit when the AC drops. I keep
>> a couple "old" phones here for just this reason.
> 
> I haven't seen an old telco phone in any home in years. When FIOS gets 
> here I'll need to have a separate copper line in use so they don't 
> disconnect it. I researched it and was told any line replaced with FIOS 
> will be disconnected with no option for reconnection.

When we bought our house here in Rochester in 1999, there was a 
wall-mount dial phone attached to a pole in the basement, and we've kept 
it there ever since. The phone's not quite original to the house, which 
was built in 1935 - it's beige, and not black, for one thing - but it's 
already come in handy during occasional power outages.

(It's not a Western Electric phone, by the way; it's Northern Electric. 
This was never a Bell territory, and our independent local telco, 
Rochester Telephone - now Frontier - did a lot of business with 
Northern. There's still a big Nortel plant in town, right next to the 
old Stromberg Carlson factory, most of which is now owned by Harris RF 
Systems.)

s