The Future of Land Line Phones

With regards to telemarketers, I can see why some people are opting out of a land line completely. I've not heard of people with cellphones having anywhere near the trouble we get from autodialers trying to give us free Caribbean cruises, or lower credit card rates, or sometimes just plain random beeping.

Whomever's behind it has learned some tricks from e-mail spammers, such as spoofing so that there's an invalid return number so it can't be traced or returned. I called Telus tech support about it again last night, and their hands were tied about it. They told me that even the police won't handle nuisance calls anymore because they get too many complaints about them.

Cellphones seem immune to this, why is that?

Cellphone numbers don't show up in phone books usually, and cellphones are really an entirely different technology that's been plugged halfway into an older, analog system. Cellphones usually have a lot more features like texting and internet use than our simple land line. As far as land line features go, we're pretty sparse, we don't even have a specific long distance plan let alone any sort of call screening or voice mail.

As I see it, having an unprotected phone line is becoming a lot like having an unprotected internet connection: all sorts of garbage comes in when you don't have some sort of wall to block it. Autodialers are like spambots in their low maintenance requirements, one could go for years without any human input or attention as long as it didn't lose power. If they can't be traced, they can't be shut down so the only way to not get garbage calls is it block them with increasing protection or drop the land line altogether.

Imagine a sort of phone doomsday, where only the minority that must have a land line have one, and only with massive protection, such as a 20-digit password AFTER the phone number just to get through. There are thousands of autodailers in places that not even the owners remember or care about. Analog land line phones have gone mostly the way of morse code or AM Radio, still supported but not really used by the public.

Now imagine some poor old lady moving into an older house without phone protection intrinsic to the house, she plugs her simple phone into the jack and leaves to get more boxes. By the time she gets back the neighbours are outside her new place ready to complain to her: something inside the house has been ringing for nearly an hour solid. If she has an answering machine, it will already be completely full with hundreds of obsolete scams for credit cards that no longer exist.

Could this be the future of the phone? Discuss.