What is this world coming to? And who is running things these days? The other day I wrote a letter to our landline telephone provider. When we got this landline, around ten years ago, here at the old farm house, the cost was thirty-nine dollars a month. The cost now is over one hundred thirteen dollars a month. Now I do believe inflation has not risen that much. At least minimum wage and social security has not tripled in ten years. We needed a phone here as there was no cell phone service, and we were driving in to work on the farm house from Texarkana. The only service was on top of the mountain, so in the beginning it meant walking up, as the road had been destroyed over time, to the top of the farm to make a cell phone call.
So I wrote to Clear Rate and asked why my bill had gone up so much in ten years and the answer was very disturbing. It says, and I quote, “Dear _______, We recently received an envelope from you regarding your rate increase.” An ENVELOPE! Cuz, who is reading our LETTERS? Is this from a person or a computer/AI? The “whatever goes on to blame Verizon for the rate increase, saying it is because of the “cost of copper wired lines”. (I do believe they were copper-wired lines when we started.) They suggest I change to their Residential Voip plan that costs twenty-five dollars a month. That way you can use your landline phone over high-speed internet. And that’s a problem, because as people in Lebanon tell me, their Verizon internet is terrible. So then, you would have to pay for internet, plus twenty-five dollars more, but I assume there are taxes on both of them, which would probably make it around a good hundred dollars a month.
Cuz, I like my landline phone. If I try to use a cell phone with Star Link and the cell phone booster, it still drops calls if I go to pick something off the floor, or go in the smoke house or the wrong room of the house. And of course there is the “there is an obstruction” that’s called FOG Star Link, it happens back here in the mountains almost every morning some months of the year. Meanwhile I can go to just about every room in the house, way out in the yard with my landline phone and if I drop it, I just pick it up, put the back cover back on and keep on talking. It doesn’t shatter in a thousand pieces, and if it does break, I can pick up another radiophone at Wal-Mart for just a little money.
Now here is the scary news cuz. During the past rainy month, which ruined our hay but helped the pastures grow, our phone was out about half of the month. The water keeps getting in the lines. People call and my phone tells me I have missed like twenty-five calls but it won’t show me who called. And I had heard from Lebanon folks who still had landlines, that they had received a letter saying Verizon was probably going to discontinue their landlines. Bad news for old folks back here. So when the Verizon guy showed up I asked him about this. He said they are already discontinuing landline service in parts of the country. According to AI land lines are actively being phased out across multiple U.S. states and communities as major telecom providers, AT&T, Verizon and CenturyLink retire legacy “POTS” plain old Telephone service. I don’t know about you cuz, but that plain old telephone service has saved lots of lives, and stupid people who have thought their cell service worked everywhere, laid on a mountain and died as they called 911, thinking someone was coming to rescue them instead of walking out of the wilderness themselves. I tried to call 911 to get some help getting a young spiked buck out of a box fence, hoping to get animal control or someone. The cell call would not call out, so I just drove down to Mom’s house, got some wire cutters and cut the little fellow out myself. I don’t know what the old folks who depend on the landlines to call the rescue squad will do. Cell service is just not reliable back here. I told the repairman what my EMT daughter (now taking a break) told me, if you discontinue the landline back here, folks will die. If you read “online” cuz; it will tell you state by state when the lines are going to be discontinued. For as of now, Verizon has petitioned the FCC to retire the lines, approximately 277,000 lines across multiple states, (VA included) starting late in 2026. Although some states reviewed have faced temporary FCC pauses.
It’s like when I found the BIG rock on the river road on a very dark night. I couldn’t call V-DOT or 911 from there and if I left someone may have smacked that rock. So between a Good Samaritan and two four-wheel drives and a good strong chain we got that rock out of the road ourselves. You simply can’t rely on cell phones back here; there are too many dead zones.
If you want to know why they want to build Data Centers, last year Americans used 159.3 trillion megabytes of data. But yet these data centers don’t help little old ladies and men back in these hills and hollers who can’t get enough clear sky for Star Link to hook up and cell service is nonexistent. Why do you think we had to run TV lines up the hills to an antenna to get one station back in the days? Now we have no antenna and no TV stations.
Meanwhile here on the farm, the firewood cutting continues. Like the cell phone and landlines, the electricity is taken out as well as trees come off the mountain when it rains. You can’t depend on it, so you had better have a good supply of firewood for your fireplace, cook stove or outside wood furnace. The grandkids have been a great help getting the wood in, and the new help on the farm has been at it as well.
Until next week, enjoy your landline while you got it.
RJ Kennedy
