Bundling lost phone service too

No electric power, unfortunately also means no cable TV, no Internet and no telephone when all three are bundled with one carrier.

In the old days, before bundling, if I lost power at home at least I had my old-fashioned landline telephone to use to tell the power company of my woes. Yes, it was more expensive to have the landline but at least I had communications.

During the most recent power outage, I, like thousands of others who have bundled their TV, Internet and telephone into one package, had to rely on a cellphone for communications, which apparently also had been affected since many of the carriers seemed to have had severe vocal communication issues. Fortunately text messages seemed to go through without too many problems.

Of course, my text message quota far exceeded my cellphone plan as it seemed to be the only means to communicate with staffers out and about gathering news and getting it to paginators building the newspaper pages at out-of-the-office sites in Ohio.

The Wood County school district also had cellphone issues in communicating with needed personnel, as did some first responders who normally rely heavily on cellphones along with two-way radios.

While satellite telephones certainly are more expensive than regular cellphones, maybe some emergency responders and others may need to look into having such communication devices for key personnel.

For the rest of us, the answer may be to just be out of touch ... a fear that drives the editor in me nearly over the edge.

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