From here, there's just a small section of original gabled hallway before you get to the JCPenney area. This area is crowded with all sorts of kiosks, including an interesting custom one for Forme, which is apparently a "smart" gym equipment company of the type that was everywhere in 2021!
That is interesting timing with the image of an AT&T store! After decades and decades of maintaining POTS copper landline home telephone service from AT&T and the Baby Bell in this area, Southwestern Bell, my service was turned off today. The timing is kind of funny because it was only a few weeks ago that I wrote a comment at Retail Retell's blog about my landline service, but just a few days after that, I got a letter from AT&T in the mail saying that due to construction in my area, they were eliminating copper line services in my area and wanted to switch me to a VoIP landline using AT&T fiber. Unfortunately, they wanted to continue to charge me POTS service prices for that VoIP line, and they'd have to run a fiber line into the house, so I decided to switch my landline number to my Internet company's VoIP landline service which is considerably cheaper and I won't have to add any additional lines to the house. Besides that, I could eliminate my AT&T bill entirely!
ReplyDeleteI considered switching to VoIP years ago (I don't like to use my mobile phone for phone calls, I prefer to talk to people from home and the quality is just better through a real landline phone/connection), but we do get a lot of storms around here which knocks power out, sometimes for several days as we've unfortunately experienced twice so far this year, and POTS landlines are usually super reliable even when the power is out and there are storms. Cell phone service can be spotty during power outages as well, so it was nice to have a reliable phone line. Well, unfortunately, we just aren't going to have an option for POTS service anymore so I'll have to go with VoIP which will obviously not work in a power outage. At least it'll be much cheaper than what I was paying before to AT&T so at least there's that. Oh, and at least I'll be able to make more than just local calls on my landline now without additional fees!
My parents finally switched their Centurylink landline number to a cell phone a few months ago. Centurylink wasn't directly kicking them off their network like AT&T did, but their phone line kept going out and Centurylink refused to fix it for real (instead, they wanted to charge them a fortune to switch to fiber), so they just gave up and got a second cell phone to move their phone number to. That wasn't an easy switch (at least for them as non-tech-savvy people), but they're saving a lot of money now and (like you) finally have free long distance calling! Since they live in a rural area, they didn't have good options for VOIP service -- the local cable company charges nearly as much as Centurylink when you include all the hidden fees (and they're already paying them a fortune for TV and internet which is already pretty unreliable).
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