Do I have to keep my AT&T land line??

[RhondaS]

I have AT&T dsl and basic phone service...will I have to keep (and continue paying for) the basic phone land line if I get U-verse?  Thanks!

[BeeBeeSA ACE - Wizard]

Nope!!

[jfw ACE - Czar]

And you should be able to keep your existing phone number too. 

[RhondaS]

Good to hear!  Thank you both!

[mibrnsurg ACE - Geek]

Well, if you get a 25 hour power outage like I just had, your Uvoice phone would have lasted about 3-4 hours while my POTS phone was still active the whole 25 hours, w/a regular phone not needing electric power.

Chris

_________________________________________________________________________

Please NO SD stretch-o-vision or 480 SD HD Channels
1-866-465-1496 for direct TS to avoid Mr. Voice recognition
Your Results May Vary, In My Humble Opinion
I Call It Like I See It, Simply a U-verse user, nothing more

[RhondaS]

lol; I see your point, but we also have cell phones in the unlikely event that our power was ever out for that long!  If I was going to have to keep paying for a land line, there wouldn't be any point in switching to U-verse.

[mibrnsurg ACE - Geek]

Luckily the cell towers were outside the huge block of power that was around me.  Hopefully another power failure such as the one that hit us here in MI and most of the NorthEast and Eastern Canada on August 14, 2003 4:10pm.  Power was off for days and all the cell towers eventually went dead, only thing that worked were POTS phones.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_Blackout_of_2003

Thinking this won't happen again?  Practically nothing has been done to the power supply system in the US to forestall a repeat of that type of blackout.  I'll never give up my POTS phone as now it's still cheaper than Uvoice, but I like the security of POTS and cell coverage is not always great here at home.

Edit:  I've had Uverse TV/internet for 25 months w/my POTS phone.

Chris

_______________________________________________________________________

Please NO SD stretch-o-vision or 480 SD HD Channels
1-866-465-1496 for direct TS to avoid Mr. Voice recognition
Your Results May Vary, In My Humble Opinion
I Call It Like I See It, Simply a U-verse user, nothing more

[Uniblurb3 ACE - Guru]

Yep, remember when that huge outage was all over the news Chris. Read your whole link because just as I thought; FirstEnergy of Ohio's fault.

From the link:

Findings

In February 2004, the U.S.-Canada Power System Outage Task Force released their final report, placing the main cause of the blackout on FirstEnergy Corporation's failure to trim trees in part of its Ohio service area. The report states that a generating plant in Eastlake, Ohio (a suburb of Cleveland) went offline amid high electrical demand, putting a strain on high-voltage power lines (located in a distant rural setting) which later went out of service when they came in contact with "overgrown trees". The cascading effect that resulted ultimately forced the shutdown of more than 100 power plants. 

[SomeJoe7777 ACE - Geek]

That's another awesome thing about Texas ... we have our own power grid.

Almost everyone east of the Rocky Mountains is on the Eastern Interconnect grid, almost everyone in the Rocky Mountains and west is on the Western Interconnect grid.  But Texas has our own, and we have very strict rules on how power can be transferred and how much power can be transferred to either the Eastern or Western Interconnect.  We only allow DC power to be traded, and only small amounts.

With a smaller grid and a much higher ratio of generating capacity to demand, we have a far more stable power grid than anywhere else in the US.

[txnroger]

AT&T's Cell Phone towers have a power back up system which normally consists of batteries but also generators in case of a long term outage.  Basically as long as we can physically get out to the tower to refuel the generators we can normally keep them up and running.

Your CVoIP service comes witlh a battery backup but as stated earlier the battery only lasts so long.  I always recommend that if you have a cell phone you keep it charged.  The cell phone has effectively become another tool you keep in your emergency kit, like a flashlight and spare batteries. 

[spd2demun ACE - Master]

Unless someone steals the generators, like what happened here with the VRAD ones during Hurricane Ike.