Faith over Fear
When I was growing up we didn’t have wireless phones … no cell phones, no cordless phone inside the house, no mobile devices of any sort, well unless you consider that the trash bin had wheels. What we did have was pay phones and emergency call boxes on the telephone polls. My mother taught me to always carry a dime in case I needed help, and I taught my daughter to always carry a quarter in the event of an emergency.
I remember a night when I was 16, driving in my mother’s gremlin and it started to rain. The spark plug cap leaked and the little red car would stall anytime the road was wet — as it did that night on my way back from the discotheque. I got out my trusty dime and phoned Mom to fire up the station wagon and come fetch me. Mom was a recluse even then and she didn’t always pick up the phone when it rang because she couldn’t face dealing with the outside world. So we had a system. Ring once. And hang up. Then call again. That was the signal that someone we knew was calling. But Mom didn’t always want to talk to one of our friends, so we had another signal. Ring TWICE. And hang up. That was the EMERGENCY signal. Which I used that night from a payphone, stuck in the rain.
But Mom wasn’t up for talking to anyone that night. And she didn’t answer even the “emergency” signal because she thought it was a bi-polar friend having a breakdown. In honesty, I don’t remember much about that night. I have a vague recollection that I woke a friend’s mother after midnight in tears asking for a ride and she came and brought me back to her house.
Nowadays Superman would be hard pressed to find a pay phone on any street corner and many people are even giving up their traditional home phones and relying on cell phone for their primary communication. You would think, because of my background in technology that I’d be among the early adopters to the fiber optic grand convergence. But in truth, its still important for my piece of mind to have an old fashion copper wire connection on a corded phone that will work even in a power outage so that if I needed to call for help it was as easy as 1-2-3. I know how my mind works in an emergency, and frankly if I had to FIND my cell phone and remember to SWIPE, SCROLL, LOCATE, PRESS and FIND THE ICON that actually PLACES the call, I may never get connected. Moreover, you don’t actually get connected with 911 services from a cell phone, even with GPS locater turned on.
“When you call 911 from a cell phone, the call often lands in a regional center. A call-taker in a far-away city or county may answer your call. To get help to you, there are two pieces of information the call-taker needs to know immediately:
- Tell the call-taker which city you’re calling from.
- Tell the call-taker what type of emergency you have.
Different emergency services use different dispatch centers. With the right information, the call-taker will transfer you to the right center.”
—– Before You Call 911 on a Cell Phone
So when I found out that my new fiber optic digital triple play at my home did not use the copper network. I was a bit worried. In truth, my last home had all digital voice as well, but I probably didn’t have the power outage concerns that I do now living in a house that was built circa 1950. On an already over crowded grid with triple digit temperatures for record length runs this summer, power can go out without warning. That coupled with our need to upgrade our breaker box or blow the main fuse if the central air runs for too long, has had my nerves on edge for the last couple of months.
But I did my homework and was reassured to learn that our digital provider has a battery backup that should last 8 hours in the event of a power outage. In addition, my man bought me an uber powerful generator that can run several of our “essentials” including a land line for even longer than that if need be.
So we bought a cheap corded phone, that didn’t require power and we felt assured that we would have access to help even if we had a black out. That is unless the power didn’t go out, but the servers are “down for maintenance.” Which happened the other night, without warning.
No internet. No TV. No phone whatsoever. It doesn’t matter that the battery backup is working, if the fiber optic serves are DOWN. The line won’t go through.
When I called the parent company the next day to explain that we have a house of people with various disabilities living here and we really needed to have access to a traditional land line in the event their fiber optic service went down, the agent on the phone created a work order for a special “mixed media” package that would install a separate copper hookup (at an additional monthly fee.) It all looked good on paper .. accept for my bank account which was already over extended. But when the technician came to the house, on a Sunday morning to hook up my new line he informed us that there WAS no copper infrastructure left in our community.
I spent hours confirming this new bit of information with several departments in between long hold times and waiting for agents to read their manuals and check their maps. And it seems to be true … I live in a “green” neighborhood that no longer has any copper infrastructure. What does this mean? It means that in a power outage you may or may not be able to reach emergency services with your home phone. But it really means that in the event they take the servers down for maintenance you WILL NOT be able to call 911.
I’ve been told by at least three agents, that they NEVER take the servers off line. And if they do, they are “suppose” to re-rout the phone lines to another server so that people will always still have a dial-tone. However, no one could explain to me why last week the entire network was down for “maintenance” with no phone access, other than to say some version of “well it must have been an important or emergency update.”
Yes, it may have been an emergency update. But what about the client base who can’t access emergency services during the outage? Somehow, the government regulations that require phone providers to ensure emergency access has a few loopholes or at least dim oversight.
Sometimes I have to wonder how it is that we define progress.
Can you hear me? Can you hear me now?
I’d like to believe that technology holds the answer to our piece of mind. That computers will save the day and that doctors can fix anything. But as I look at my long held beliefs one by one and I examine my fears closely through the jeweler’s loop .. what I find is Faith. As my redneck guru said to me the other night when I was a puddle of tears over some transient wave of unworkability … he said “Karma, I have faith that I’m okay and that I’ll always be okay.” And he does. Its strong and deeply rooted in his belief system. I wish I could have that same unshakable foundation that he has. I hope one night as he lays sleeping next to me it will waft over to my side of the bed on one of his powerful snores. But in truth, my survival has never been contingent on a microchip or even my mother picking up the phone. I have always been guided by Grace. Faith over fear. It is by no means unwavering .. but it is always where I come home to after the rain clears.
