Landline Goodbye…VoiP Comes to Berryridge Farm

 We thought the day would never come. The day we could finally ditch the phone company.

Almost everyone we know has let go of their landline, and simply uses their smartphone. Sounds like a no-brainer. But as I’ve mentioned before, John and I don’t have smart phones. There’s no cell signal for miles around, and we only go into civilization a couple of times a week, so why bother?

Our neighbors who have cut the cord go to work every day, and are frequently out and about so they can be reached away from home. The telecommunications conglomerate that originally serviced our area sold their phone division to a smaller company, who then turned around and created a new phone company—this one with legendarily bad customer service.

Every problem or line failure, this new company has blamed the customer, and refuses to make a service call unless you pay them the big bucks.

Our neighbor’s line had failed, but the phone company kept telling her it was her problem, not theirs. She had fought with these clowns for nearly a month, until she finally told them to &%*#@$!!

Over the years, our own phone line had become scratchier and scratchier. Adding insult to injury, the prices of the new phone company had been going up steadily for months. A dollar added here, another 3 bucks there, more fees, more taxes… A bill that had generally run about $68/month gradually ballooned—and last month it was $98!

But all these years, John and I figured we had no option but to stick with this outfit.

The last couple of months, we’ve been dealing with an urgent family matter. And right in the middle of it, weeks ago, we picked up the phone and had no dial tone.

A big windstorm had hit the night before. Our cable is buried on our private lane, so we figured a tree had come down on the lines somewhere in the area. We are pretty philosophical about outages like this, so we didn’t think twice about it.

A couple of days went by, but we still had no phone.

We talked to the one neighbor family who had a landline they hardly used. They had dial tone…clearly, it hadn’t been a tree after all.

So John went to the phone company website to report the outage. They had a phone number you could call—which obviously didn’t help us. And there was no email for reporting problem. You had to initiate a chat session with some bot. This automated system indicated that we should check our outdoor phone company box and plug our phone in there, to see if we had dial tone.

Out John went with his Phillips screwdriver to the side of the shop the box was attached to, and got it open. Well, the line was just as dead in the outdoor box as it was in the house. He contacted the company to let them know…and after two days, had still received no reply.

We had to ask ourselves: did we really want to pursue a repair? Almost certainly, we would have to go through what our neighbor had, going back and forth with the phone company for weeks while they shunted the problem aside.

And did we want to do this while we were already so anxious about our ongoing family crisis?

Surely there had to be another solution. We thought longingly of getting smartphones…but no cell signal was no cell signal.

Our neighbors had used Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology for years. I’d always figured it was a very high techie-techie process—so our satellite internet speed wouldn’t be nearly fast enough. "Even so," I said to John, "maybe it's time we looked into it."

John checked our satellite internet company, and what do you know…

They not only offered VoIP, but they were having a special! Going out of town for caregiving over the holidays, we had to delay the process a bit. But just 2 days after John requested the equipment from the satellite company, the package arrived.

It’s a little box with a phone jack that you connect via Ethernet cable to your internet modem. You can even use your existing phone. Once John went on the satellite company website to let them know we had all the parts connected, we were in business: with a live phone line and a temporary phone number!

We had heard VoIP sound quality wasn’t anything to brag about, but we’ve found it’s far better—no scratchiness—than our late, unlamented phone company’s. It’s true, that when the satellite dish gets snow-covered, the signal will be spotty at best, or disappear. Still, a good northeaster will blow the snow off, and when there’s no wind, John doesn’t mind clambering up on a ladder to brush the dish off.

We’re still waiting for the phone company to “port” over our original number to the satellite company. But it feels wonderful to deal with our satellite people, who’ve provided stellar customer service since the get-go. And don’t charge an arm and a leg for it.

It’s funny, that what you take for granted—like having a phone—can feel really special when you haven’t had one for over 3 weeks.

Forecast for rain…but we get more snow!

And today, after getting another 6 inches of snow last night, adding to the 2 feet that’s fallen since Christmas, we are snowed in. So it feels especially comforting to have a reliable link with the outside world.

PS…The bird-friendly garden is a gift that keeps on giving…Below: a chickadee dining on zinnia and hyssop seeds the northeaster blew off the seed heads!

Chickadee enjoying the winter garden!