RFI: digital phone service (like, through the cable company)

i know that if you lose power, you lose phone, which is an obvious disadvantage compared to a regular land line. but we don't lose power that often, plus of course we have cell phones as backup.

and if there's already a thread on this, just direct me thither. i didn't see one among the gazillion phone-related threads.

I switched to this a couple of months ago on my work line. Working fine so far, and yeah it's a huge savings compared to my old phone company (AT&T). The cable company I'm with seem to make some sort of distinction between this and VOIP, but I don't see it.

Audio quality on incoming calls seems a little degraded compared to the landline, but everybody tells me my calls out sound good.

that sounds promising. i'm tempted to give it a shot.

Sort of unrelated, but an uninterruptible power supply big enough to power your computer, phone and cable modem (long enough to finish your call or save and close your files) is a great thing to have in thunderstorm-prone areas. With cable phone service, you won't necessarily lose phone at the moment you lose power.

thats weird. comcast advertise an advantage of cable phone service being that it doesnt go out when the power goes out.

The phone signal via the cable doesn't go out, but the power to the phone itself does, unless you have a backup/UPS.

cable companies make cell phone companies look good

I have digital cable and internet through Time Warner, and they'll occasionally call and try to pitch me on their phone service. The question I always ask is: "If I signed up, and the cable went out, how can I get ahold of you to let you know?"

Two years later and they still haven't come up with an answer. I'm still wary.

Funnily enough, some dummy with a backhoe cut the line this morning and knocked out phone and internet. But we were heading out to see Dark Knight anyway, and everything was back up when we got home.

don't get comcast.