I remember growing up on a farm and when the power went out, the phone still usually worked.
I do have a cell phone which may or will probably work during a power outage.
The power outage thing and phones depends on allot of factors, where you live what kind of power loss, where the phone company gets their power, etc.
On the farm, we sometimes could have power and no phone too.
Of course things have changed allot and in some ways not at all.
If power goes out, the provider may still have power. My internet comes in on my phone line so nothing has changed there, but the internet would be down because the modem needs electricity.. easy solution. Provide
your own power with a battery back up (UPS). You have the same odds as with the old technology because you are still using the same company and lines and much of the same technology.
In my city, I have maybe had power outage 3 times in the last ten years. Who did I want to phone? The power company "like all my neighbors".
As far as voip providers, some are more reliable than others which is a related but separate issue.
Tel cos do generally provide good service.
Not sure if loss of phone service is a reason to loose your head though some people seem to think it's the end of the world. I on occasion leave home without my cell phone. I know its insane!
As far as the learning thing goes, nobody can know everything and what you do learn is directly related to effort. Some older people have different priorities, then again some younger people do too.
I know I learn things a little at a time. Also up until recently knew nothing about voip.
Someone asked about provider experiences and someone talked about their experience of vonage over ooma.
The big difference in quality most people have with vonage over other voip services is vonage equipment has built in qos. If you do a proper voip setup, with proper qos, any voip provider should give you identical quality.
When I first started, the qos and bandwidth issues were a challenge for me, however I have since tried multiple voip providers with similar results and and I actually get better quality now than my brother who has vonage.
One extra note on this issue, low latency is required for voip, some locations cannot get the low latency necessary and proximity to servers, connections and all that stuff plays a part.
I started with a magic jack plus and it was good "after conquering my aforementioned issues".
My problem with magic jack was that my calls would drop. Whether this was a firmware issue or company policy, I do not know. They have released a new firmware update that is supposed to help with dropped calls.
Google voice also drops calls, but usually only on very long calls. Quality with them is pretty decent. My latency to their servers could be better. I still use google voice.
Voip buster was also decent, but, I like the freephoneline/google voice option.
Free phoneline has been quite good for me. No dropped calls. Good service, decent long distance prices.
Reliability for service being up is not as good for this service, but has not been an issue yet for me. Also even if they are down, I still have other options with other voip services.
For presentations, demonstrations can be a good way to go.