[Discuss] AT&T eliminating copper phone lines

[richb at pioneer.ci.net (Rich Braun)]

+1 to trying a port to Google Voice. I subscribed to it a couple months before
my move to San Francisco, just so I could get a 415 phone number to give out
to friends before the move. (Wound up keeping my 617 mobile number ever since,
weird... but yeah I understand the advantages of keeping the same number for a
couple decades, which is why I keep it.)

I've been using an Obitalk VOIP gateway and the free Google Voice service as
my primary landline for almost 6 years now. I too have long been
hard-of-hearing, and it's truly annoying how the mobile-phone companies
persist in over-compressing voice calls at a time of plenty in back-end
network bandwidth.

Get an Obi200 VOIP unit ($47.46 on Amazon), sign up for Google Voice (still
free) on a random phone number and try it out with your current Internet
service and current telephone handset. I think you'll be amazed at how much
better than a cell phone it is. If you like it, then you can port your
long-time number to Google Voice (probably).

-rich