The History Of POTS

Plain old telephone service - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. No, I am not talking about the POTS you cook in. POTS is a retronym for Plain Old Telephone Service, and the recent news that half of Americans don't have it anymore got me thinking about the future of telephony. In fact, I will wager that half of the rest of us who do have a POTS phone in the house never use it. I can't think of a handset anywhere in our house. My office still has landlines, for incoming calls; but, I use Skype or email for most other business communication. I most definitely use VOIP for outgoing long distance calls. Google Voice has just announced that calls in the U.S. and Canada will remain free through 2013. If your computer has an Internet broadband connection and a microphone, you can use Google Voice to call anyone for free. Of course, you have to pay for the broadband connection, but calls are a nice bonus attached to Internet service. How about you? When was the last time you picked up the phone and made a call?