I saw this commentary in Telephony Online.

I still have a landline to my house. I sometimes ask myself why am I spending the $25 a month to keep it.

One of the main reasons I keep it is that the phone company provides a separate power source for the telephone from the commercial grid power. If the snow and ice take down all the cables on the poles where power and phone overlap (about 1/4 mile to my place) then I am out of luck. But  if the power line goes down elsewhere, I should still be able to get dial-tone on the phone.  And if the commercial power goes out, the odds are the cell phone tower has also lost power and unless the wireless companies have gone to the much added expense of providing a long-term battery backup to the cell tower, your cell phone is dead.

It seems like once every year or two we get a major power outage in our area and I can look across the valley and see the darkness. Something breaks far away and everything in the area will take a power hit until the electric company can reroute the power. Last year I think we were out for over 24 hours because ice took down some power lines 10 miles away. It took the utility that long to reach the break because of the storm.

And I have several different type telephones including ones that don’t need to be plugged into a wall socket to work.

The redundancy of having cell phone and landline is a bit of added comfort when you are going to be stranded in a blizzard.  (As I write this it is 80′ and sunny)