Sorry to hear about your missed opportunity. Evidently you do not use your landline much? Otherwise you should have noticed the outage. Voicemail from the phone company offers some redundancy over a old school answering machine, It does come in handy at times especially during outages such as yours.
Syscrusher had some good ideas to consider.
As for me, I live in a town of 25,000 people and most eveyone knows me. Many people still call my home number. I am reluctant to ditch my land line for several reasons safety and redundancy being two of them. I choose to keep my landline with only basic options ( no voicemail). I have my phone company "Simm Ring" my home number to my cell. I can answer the call at home in my easy chair or my cell phone which ever works best for me. I often let unrecognized incoming calls go to my cellular voicemail. Something you might consider? You keep your identity and have the best of both worlds. No matter what technology you use, sooner or later something is going to malfunction and let you down.