Why are so many of you worried about emergency communication? If you were really concerned you would get ham radios and learn how to use radio nets. During Katrina I was sending and receiving messages and in some cases even directly talking to my relatives in the affected area over the 20 and 60 meter bands. Land lines are not good in emergencies, they are pretty much a waste of copper and a hold over from the days before fiber. We use it because its there, we use it because there are no install costs, when the install costs of fiber come down, copper and POTS will go the way of the BBS. Some people may still use them, and they are novelty, but they waste time when compared to the new technology. We should embrace progress. Also one more note, The vo-coders are the problem with the cellphones, the land line is still digital its just got a higher quality vo-coder. Soon we will have more cellphone bandwidth and we can use more pipe per call for voice, we just have to demand better sound quality in our phones and let our dollars speak. If we keep buying mediocre products there is no incentive to change them.