Anonymous wrote:For a wall phone, get a Cortelco 2554 or the older Western Electric model. It is line powered, so it will work if the power fails.
Do _not_ get any sort of VOIP service as suggested above. You want a regular copper phone line from the local telephone company. The latter infractructure is built to a much higher degree of reliability than the Internet and is powered from the telephone central office. It will also properly communicate your address (including apartment number, if any) to 911 services.
I let Verizon switch my service to FIOS Voice (Verizon's VOIP) because I got tired of having to call for service when the copper line got noisy. It's obsolete infrastructure that the phone companies can't be expected to maintain forever. FIOS Voice quality is much better.
911 service is supposed to work properly on FIOS Voice. I haven't used it.