POTS; was: Anyone here from Oregon USA to help with collection pickup?

[der Mouse]

>> But what about cell phones and roaming?  [...]

I suspect that this works only because most cellphones are not roaming
at any given moment.  (To those who know - can the cellphone system
handle having more than a small fraction of the cellphones roaming?)

I also note that this works only because each cellphone *has* a "home".
Individual portable phone numbers might work if handled similarly, but
it would make service for an individual's phone number dependent on a
switch that the individual may not have any particular relation to at
all (and, depending on how numbers are assigned, may never have had).
If I lose service when the switch down the street is knocked out, I
find that a lot more tolerable than if, say, I lose service whenever
some switch off in Germany, which I've never lived near, dies.

Of course, PSTN facilities are supposed to have five nines of uptime.
Five minutes a year is probably livable, even if you square it (ten
minutes a year) because two mostly unrelated hops (caller -> home
switch -> current switch) are involved.

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