might sound dumb but how do landlines work? Is it a public service/utility or do you have to pay to get the jacks in your house to work?

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This might be stupid but I never really grew up in a time when people used home phones. My family, at least. The other day I realized there was a phone jack behind an end table in my house that I hadn’t noticed before and started thinking about it and having a lot of questions. Are these phone jacks a public service or utility, like water and electricity? Where do the jacks even go to? do they have a phone number already assigned to them or something? Like if I wanted to, could I just plug any old phone into the jack and have it work?

In: Technology

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Anonymous 0 Comments

> Are these phone jacks a public service or utility, like water and electricity?

Sort of, the telephone companies do tend to get regulated like other public utilities. But it should be noted that you **still have to pay for them.** Yeah, like all the other public utilities. Water and electricity are not free, those have bills too.

> Where do the jacks even go to?

They all end up feeding to telephone lines that go on… telephone poles. I’m *sure* you have heard of a telephone pole.

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