How often do you have power failures at home to observe this failrue? Your battery TV works but the phone doesn't? I assume you're using a standard plain phone, not a cordless.
I am really surprised that is the case and as far as I know, that should be extremely rare. Have you reported that to the ph> The reason for having the telephone separate from the computer network (and
That is very true.
The telephone network has 100 years of experience behind it. That means they have made their mistakes over time and learned from them, from dealing with weather and storms to equipment shortages to untrained technicians and fires in C.O.s. In the 1970s they had equipment failures and "blue box phreaks" and learned to deal with that as well by separating control signals from the voice channel. I don't think IP has any protection like that whatsoever, given all the crap that flows through "filters".
Short of everyone lifting their handset at once or a critical cable or C.O. being destroyed (which happens), the system is extremely reliable. All components (except the phone sets) are built to very heavy standards.
The IP computer network is new and constantly evolving. It is full of malicious attacks and sabatoge that are a long way to being resolved. It is full of bugs. It crashes all the time from numerous software and hardware failures. A few months ago my employer was completely knocked out by sabotage (an email virus). That happens to people all the time. You want me to depend on something like that?
To suggest we abandon this network is ludicrous and irresponsible. The IP geeks have a long way to go toward reliability and have their heads in the sand if they believe otherwise.
Some proponents of this sort of thing are probably young techies who have little experience in the real world out of the classroom. Others are businesspeople who want to be the first to sell a new service/product at a high markup regardless of its technical merits.