Canadians hang on to hard-wired phones in case of power outage
TORONTO – With many Toronto-area residents still recovering from a major ice storm that knocked out power to hundreds of thousands, some are thinking ahead to better prepare themselves for the next time the power goes out.
One saving grace could be collecting dust in your junk drawer – a hard-wired land-line phone.
Sure, smartphones are great for checking Twitter and Facebook during a power outage – as many Ontario residents did during last month’s ice storm – but relying on battery-powered devices can be risky if you don’t have a way to charge them.
Plus, cellphone service can also become unreliable in periods of high volume – like a weather emergency.
Caledon, Ont. resident Cheryl Van Daalen-Smith was thankful that her family still had a hard-wired phone during the ice storm.
“The cordless [phone] of course eventually died and so did the cellphone. If we didn’t have our hard-wired phone we would not have been able to call Hydro One several times, and then the tree company when Hydro One eventually came and said they couldn’t help us until we hired a private company to cut limbs that were five feet inside the perimeter of our property,” Daalen-Smith told Global News via email.
Global News received comments from many readers who still had a land-line in their home. Some noted they’ve kept the service around just for emergencies.
The drive to keep the old phones runs counter to the general cord-cutting trend.
In 2011, the Convergence Consulting Group estimated that about one in seven households – two million total – would cut out their home phone services and rely on their cellphones by the end of the year.
Convergence Consulting Group also said that Canadian telecom residential land-line services were down 8.2 per cent in 2012 and predicted the 2013 number would be 8.7 per cent.
Calgary resident Vikki Perkins said her reason for keeping her land-line service is simple. “It’s because I live with my elderly parents and if there is a power outage and something goes wrong, I want to know I can call for help,” she told Global News.
Perkins noted she also keeps a battery-powered radio and even a hand-crank radio around in case of power outages.
“I have had to call 911 in the middle of a blizzard to get my mom an ambulance when she had a heart attack – even had to dig out my front walk so the EMTs could get to my door,” she said.
“I won’t give up the landline. I think it’s too important.”
It’s important to keep in mind that some telephone companies use cable lines to deliver phone service – such as Rogers’ “Home Phone” service and Shaw’s personal home phone service (Shaw is the parent company of Global News) – which will not work during a power outage.
These terminals are equipped with battery back-ups that allows customers to make phone calls during power outages.
However, these terminals can lose their charge over time. Customers can call their provider to have their battery checked and replaced if needed.
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