Marshall, it doesn't even have to come down to a matter of affordability, although that should always be one of the primary considerations.
Let me share with you an increasingly common moment in the Coluccio household, with regard to this subject.
In large households such as mine with growing (and grown) kids about, and a newly enlightened spouse who was once and only very recently a cyber luddite, it becomes a logistic horror show trying to keep track of which lines are open at any one time, and which ones are free. Okay, folks, the shoemaker's kids, and all that. Things will improve when I get my DACS, or shared Cable modem/or dsl line, whichever comes first. I have a funny feeling, though, that I will be dealing with TLABs, first, to tell you the truth.
Two of my daughters do web page design work for school and job, they depend almost entirely on the web now for numerous homework related assignments, and they socialize, oh... do they socialize, on the 'net. Me? Forget about it. My wife is now thoroughly hooked on AOL and a couple of sites which have renewed her interest in crafts for profit.
And the cordless phones. There are a half-dozen or more cordless base-stations in the house competing for air rights.
Add to this formula three new laptops to the three existing desktops, which could find themselves in any one of a dozen rooms - all of them wired - and, Oi!
The laptops are killers because you never know where they will show up and what kinds of conflicts they will cause due to the line sharing scheme.. or chaos model, as it usually turns out.
Over this past weekend I had cause to call 911 because of a vehicular mishap outside my front door. Nothing overly serious or life threatening, but the police had to be called, as one person was slightly injured.
Trying to find an available line to use was a joke. My Sprint PCS phone gave me fast busies when I tried to use it for 911, which is something that really annoyed the hell out of me at that moment, so I went to a landline.
Three pc's were online at the time, including mine, and trying to deduce which of the lines were in use and which was free (I have five POTS lines in my house... I could probably breakeven with a T1 by now), was like playing a shell game in Times Square with a seasoned pro.
After almost losing my voice from screaming up and down the three sets of stairs in the house, I finally went down to the den and disconnected my own session, in order to place the call. Feeling somewhat pleased with myself at that point, I went back to the front door and saw, and heard (sirens screaming), two police cars pulling up to my door. They were already responding to someone else's call.
BTW, does the Race arrangement introduce any barriers to making 911 calls from the compressed line?
Regards, Frank Coluccio |
