Should I give up my landline?

Everyone I know under 50 yrs old has given up their landline because they are worthless unless the cell towers are down and your area has buried landlines.

I had a friend who put this on his landline answering machine. He never picked up until after it played its recording.

“Hi, this is Bob. I screen ALL of my calls. If you are a telemarketer, hang up now. Otherwise, please leave a message and I’ll call you back, if I want to.”

He said it worked like a charm. His friends knew the back story, and weren’t offended, and the rest, well they already knew what they needed to do. LOL

Well – as I said, it is in disaster situations which I have faced alone.

I have caller ID but still go to the phone to check it but your solution is something to consider.

I like having mine as a back-up. It doesn’t cost nearly as much as a cell phone.

@marinelife Yes – me too.

We’ve had Vonage for years now. We kept our old landline number. We also stay on top of keeping our number on the Do Not Call list. It’s ideal if you’ll be making over seas calls, as they cost nothing extra in the plan.

Usually our cable doesn’t go out, so this is an ideal solution for us.

However, most people we know only use a cell phone now.

I haven’t had a landline for years, and the last two natural disasters I was in took out all the landlines and power for about two weeks but cellular service still functioned better than most things in the tri-state area did at the time.

I o ten ha e to  alk to people wh  ar  in places wi h v ry p or rec  t on.

On a land line, that would be “I often have to talk to people who are in places with very poor reception.” So I’m not giving up mine.

I don’t have a landline, they annoy me. I like my cell phone because I can shut it off.

I love my landline. However, now I have mine through my cable company so in an emergency situation it is more likely not to work than the old fashioned kind. My cell phone often does not have great reception in places I live, I prefer to talk on a regular phone than a cell, and once in a while I need to fax and I use the landline for that also. My cell phone does count minutes if I call another landline, so if I want to gab with a girlfriend who is on a landline or if I wait on hold forever with a business it eats up the minutes. I usually don’t come close to using all my minutes, but when you do the charges are ridiculous for going over. I’m pretty sure I pay about $10 a month for my landline because of the bundle I have.

@flip86 You can turn off the ringer on your landline.

I speak only for myself; here we have terrible cell service and many power outages in the winter, necessitating a land-line and at least one corded phone.

For you, I can’t say, but for me the answer is a solid no.

• I want a phone that that doesn’t follow me around. I don’t need to get a reminder from the dentist’s office while I’m lunching with a friend—or while I’m sleeping. People who call early in the day can leave a message. The landline rings in another part of the house and I don’t hear it from the bedroom. At night (and well into the morning) my cellphone stays by the bed for calls from family members.

• I want a phone that always stays in one place so I can find it. When I misplace my cellphone, I can call the number from my landline and locate the ringing cellphone.

• I want a phone that reaches a household. Many a time it really doesn’t matter whom I speak to first, but I know the location I’m calling. It used to be nice when I called my brother or sister and reached a niece or nephew answering the phone. There are also plenty of incoming calls that are just as much for my husband as for me. I wouldn’t like to have to answer them all.

• I want a phone that isn’t affected by cell tower reception. My relatives among the Green Mountains in Vermont don’t have much use for cellphones, but they’ve been connected by landline since they had a two-digit phone number and all calls went through the village’s central operator.

I also think offices and businesses are a very long way from replacing phones that reach a certain desk or location and phones that have extensions and easy transfer functions. I doubt that we’ll ever see hospitals and corporate office structures and government buildings pull out the multifunction phones that are anchored to a physical position.

I honestly believe that the current mania for devices that connect wirelessly to everything will pass. The ability to bring the Internet as well as multimedia resources into tiny boxes and pads that accompany us everywhere is a fad that we’ll have difficulty explaining to our young of a few generations from now. I don’t know what will tip the balance—maybe it will be the decrease of cheap and abundant energy, maybe it will be something political like the Snowden leaks, maybe it will be paranoia among the populace over putting everything they do and think and every move they make on record accessible to anyone, including those who do not have their best interests at heart—but I think something will make people say “This is insane and we have to stop it.” Newspaper presses will have to be rebuilt from scratch and kids will have to rediscover games without electronics behind them. I hope there will still be landlines somewhere.

@JLeslie When I did have a landline I had a cheap phone that didn’t have that feature. It’s been quite a few years since I’ve used one.

@flip86 You can just take the phone out of the wall.

It doesn’t matter, I don’t think the OP is worried about the phone ringing. I think she is worried about regreting getting rid of the line if she bites the bullet.

What do you mean by “landline”? I’m assuming you mean some kind of VOIP service, like Vonage, Comcast, or Verizon FIOS. We’‘ve kept our VOIP line (Vonage since November of 2003, then switched to Verizon FIOS since last year) but hardly use it. Its primary purpose is to interrupt whatever discussion we’re having. One of us looks at the caller ID, announces who it is, then we continue our discussion and let the phone continue to ring.
The only advantage I can see of keeping one of these services is if you happen to have poor cell signal at your house. In that case, it’s worth the $25—$30/mo.

EDIT: The reason we still have it is because my wife doesn’t feel comfortable losing the phone number. I make a pitch every year for dropping it, and every year I think I think we get closer to that goal.

@tom_g Verizon FIOS

Are you in one of those “triple-play” deals? Sometimes it’s more expensive to drop the phone, depending on what services you pay for.

@tom_g Yes, but I am very close to dropping my cable TV. That’s another decision.

^^ Yes! Now that is a decision that I can completely get behind! Life-changing. It’s like winning the lottery.

@tom_g I never watch it so it won’t be life-changing for me.

@janbb: “I never watch it so it won’t be life-changing for me.”

I’m projecting. Most of the time my wife and I have been together, we didn’t have tv. But occasionally, we’ve had cable. When we do (and this is one of those times), it invariably finds itself powered on at night. The sound of it drives me bonkers, and the content turns me into Mr. Misanthrope. It’s great that you don’t use it. So, it sounds like a no-brainer. Kill the phone and tv and save yourself some $$!

I’m with @marinelife and @janbb. I like having a landline as a backup and—and please, younger jellies, don’t laugh or ask me what a fax is—fax capabilities are built into my commercial-grade printer and amazingly, I still need to be able to send hard copy from time to time. Yes, I know I can e-fax, but I just prefer the old way.

On the other hand… I’m getting close to switching to a new ISP, and when I do, I’ll drop my landline.

What’s a land line?

Seriously I haven’t had a knadline in 15 years

My dad always told me land was earth’s most precious commodity, @Lightlyseared. ;-)

I’m too cheap to get a cell phone and so I have a no frills land line and I rarely use it.

Sometimes during a disaster (like an earthquake, a terrorist bombing, etc.), land lines may be operational while cell phones will definitely be out of order due to the over-use.

@gondwanalon I pay $25 a month for my pre-paid cheap cell, and always have minutes left over. For me, it is more convenient, and I avoid political and sales calls…lol

Drop the land line. I’ve dropped cable too. I mean, I can watch anything I want for free online. It’s just a matter of knowing where to look!

After Sandy last October my land line worked for twenty four hours after the storm. Fios land line comes with a battery that failed after that. We had No cells for more than five days. For the land line we replaced the battery back up. The land line comes with my Fios internet and cable package. Cells need to be charged frequently. They are easy to lose or misplace. I feel more secure having both. In an emergency 911 can call back on a Fios land line. The land line is cheap.
I still send emails and refuse to pay for endless data charges. I could practically pay my mortgage or what some people pay for their cells.

After the Loma Prieta earthquake, a lot of people lost their power, water, and gas, but their phones worked, and that kept them sane.
When I make the move to my retirement place, I will have a wired phone, even though it will be an added expense.

@filmfann and @philosopher I think I’m with you for those exact reasons. The cell phone service was in and out after Sandy; the land line worked.

The only people I know with landlines are my mother and grandmother.

I know I have no use for one, even though my cable company desperately wants me to have one.

I live in the middle of South Carolina. Our last hurricane that caused any damage was Hugo in 1989 and we don’t have earthquakes, so I don’t really worry about losing cell service for any length of time. And I have Verizon, so my service is pretty damn good.

I live in a region that excels at power outages. Whenever there’s a severe storm, the question isn’t whether some areas will lose electricity, but which places and for how long.

When we’re the lucky ones, sitting around waiting for the electricity to return, the land line always works. The cell towers lose power and shut down.

Hooray for land lines! They’re reliable. Also, it’s a good idea to have phones that serve the entire household. If someone really needs to reach us, he/she won’t get the voicemail of a cellphone that’s powered-down or sitting in someone’s coat pocket.

Woke up this morning after severe rain showers with no telephone service. I called the local dictator server on my cell to report the problem but the signal was so thin that my phone co. rep…always eager to serve me…could barely understand my complaint.

I then had to rush off to a doctor’s appointment and remake the complaint call on the receptionist’s land line.

@janbb – Many people lost their old-school landlines and/or VOIP service after Sandy. We don’t have FiOS up here yet; so all we have is cable, which was out for days and the cell was out, too. We drove about 5 miles until we got a signal so we could check in with family and friends. Our cell was restored before the cable was. None of them are guaranteed to always work.

I hate talking on the phone. Most of the time, my phone is on Silent or Do Not Disturb. I give a Google Voice number to stores, and I screen 99% of my calls. People who know me, know to send a text or email.

@KNOWITALL We pay $19.57 (including tax) for our land line. I’m very good at saying “No” and quickly hanging up on people who want money from me. HA!

@janbb I think @hearkat may have hit it on the head: “None of them are guaranteed to always work.”

I fully understand that Sandy was a big storm and a terrible ordeal, but really, how often does that happen?

I haven’t had a landline phone for ten years or more. I don’t miss the expense. I get Internet through the cable TV company, and when they try to raise rates, I simply call and ask to drop the TV portion of my service. They always change their minds.

In my opinion, a landline phone is not worth the money.

I actually have 3 landlines, but that’s because I run a business out of my home office. I have a local number 617 area code that allows unlimited nationwide calling. I have a second number with my 800 number aliased to it for incoming customer calls. And I have 45 Meg Cable Internet plus TV with all the channels my wife loves and a phone to boot because the bundle is cheaper than without the phone. I use it for my fax. One of my two Verizon lines also has DSL on it just as a backup for when the Cable Internet goes out.

I’m on the phone all day every day talking to businesses via land lines. My clients are scattered all over the USA. Doing that with a cell would require an insane minutes cost.

I keep mine. I am not sure why. Probably just nostalgia. Although, Suddenlink has been trying to frighten me into believing that 911 cannot find me without it, Hmmmmmmmmm.

I don’t have a landline and I don’t know anyone that does, or has cable tv. We stream everything to watch, make scype calls and have never missed either one. My android is super cheap and does everything.

@Jeruba “I honestly believe that the current mania for devices that connect wirelessly to everything will pass.”

I honestly believe you couldn’t be more incorrect. The use of cellphones and smartphones is growing exponentially especially in third world countries where it’s cheaper to put up a cell tower than string phone lines.

Desktop computer sales are plummeting, and the reverse is happening for tablets, which are even outpacing laptops.

The future points to more of the smaller devices that can connect anywhere and fewer machines that need wires.

I have a question. Does fios use the old fashioned phone lines? It isn’t cable? If the electricity goes out you still have fios phone working like old fashioned Bell service.

Fios is fiber-optic line. It operates at a much higher bandwidth than wired connections can currently achieve. It’s almost in here where I live. The fiber-optic cable is in place. But Verison just hasn’t invested in the central office infrastructure to make it work. So I am stuck with Comcast, who offers ultra-high-speed cable Internet that’s not too shabby, but is no match for fiber optic.

@ETpro Well, we are talking just phone for now. So, if the electricity goes out does the fiber optic keep working like the old fashioned phone lines?

@JLeslie No. Old fashioned phone lines are powered by a 35 volt potential between the phone line pairs. Lots of feature phones do die when the power fails, but the old-fashioned princes phone or the good old desk phone still works as long as the phone lines are up. Fiber optic relies on external power sources. All but one of the phones in my house are feature phones that die when the power fails, That one is a feature gree phone powered exclusively by the phone line current. I got it so power failures couldn’t interrupt my phone service, and also because I can easily take it outside to the network interface box and test whether a loss of dial tone is due to internal wiring, or is in Verizon’s external system. If it’s in my wring, I have to pay to have Verizon service pay an arm an a leg to fix what I could easily fix myself. So the princess phone needs no AC input and I can easily take it out the the Network Interface Box on the outside of the place, plug it in there, and see if I have a dial tone. I’ve been here just over a year and lost dial tone three times, always on the Verizon side of the Network Interface box, so at $13 bucks the simple phone was money very well spent.

So, basically @janbb‘s phone isn’t really the type of landline we think of that works after a bad storm when the electricity is out since she has Verizon Fios. I think she is under the impression it is, but I could be wrong. When people say the landlines work when the electricity goes out, they are talking about the lines of old technology. I have been through many a hurricane, and having a regular landline back then I never did lose my phone. Now that I have a cell phone, I decided to risk my landline not working and have been bundling with my cable company the last 10 years or so. I was late to the cell phone world.

@JLeslie – most VOIP providers include a phone router that has a battery backup when the power goes out. Many people were without power for over 5 days after Sandy… I’m not sure how long those backup batteries last.

I think my battery backup lasts 8 hours. I am going to look into this further but I think I still have an emotional attachment to having a landline.

@hearkat I am so ignorant on the technology, thanks for telling me about the battery backup. I don’t really understand how it all works. If “verizon” loses electricity then does the phone not work? Like is there some sort of station, similar to how electrcity goes through or comes from a power station? Or, maybe it is a hub or relay? That would be very local and be affected by a storm possibly?

I don’t like land lines. I like to know who is calling, and I like to be able to mute it. I don’t like unexpected calls and I don’t like not knowing who is calling.

@Headhurts My land lines displays the caller’s name and number, and the phoneset has a mute button.

@SadieMartinPaul So does my mums

No, Don’t. Do what I have decided to do; surrender my landline when they pry my cold, dead fingers from the dial holes.

Just giving my opinion, @Hawaii_Jake. It’s not the phone connections so much as the Internet connections (and all that’s behind them) that I think we’ll come to see as wildly out of control. Consider this question posted an hour ago.

@ETpro
I wish I still had the old type of landline. After Sandy the battery back failed. It worked for less than 24 hours. We did not have cells for more than five days.
My fax is also linked to my land line. Our cell reception is not always good.

The cell phone companies want to get rid of land lines. They want every one to have unlimited data plans. That is how they make the biggest profits. I refuse. I still send email. My land line has unlimited calling through out, the US, Canada and Puerto. It remains part of my triple play package.

For further contemplation: smartphone tracking.

@Jeruba – I’m not sure I understand your point by posting that link, since most people who choose to have a landline still use a mobile device when out and about, where the tracking is occurring. Most still leave them on for text messaging and other notifications even when at home, and I’d bet it is the primary phone people use even at home with a landline present. Many people never turn their mobile devices off, and I am surprised by the number that don’t even know how to turn them off. Therefore, the fact that the mobile device is traceable seems irrelevant to the discussion about whether a person should use only their mobile or whether to keep a landline backup.

I’m pretty sure that the vast majority of Americans have computers with Internet service in their homes. VOIP calls – including those through cable and FiOS carriers – are being conducted over the Internet, so the NSA and whomever else wants to collect that data is going to collect it. Traditional hardwired phone lines are also having their data collected. Sending physical documents may well be to most private form of communication, these days. We have tracking devices in our cars with navigation systems, auto-toll systems, motorist assistance systems (like On-Star), etc. I bet even car with Satellite radios could be tracked if someone wanted to do it. Now there is concern about people remotely hacking car computers or household smart systems. So again, I don’t quite understand the relevance of your link.

@Jeruba I’m pretty sure your Telco knows where your land line goes too. And if the NSA want to know, all they have to do it order the so called “FISA Court” to give them a warrant. They ALWAYS get it.

My purpose in citing the article on smartphone tracking is to point out that some people are indeed finding the wholesale invasion of privacy objectionable. This relates to my belief that something, and very likely a backlash, is going to take the shimmer and shine off being connected to the Internet all the time and everywhere you go.

@hearkat, I’m sorry, but I just can’t read long blocks of tiny print.

@Jeruba – I wasn’t going to use the “whisper” but realized that we’re in General and didn’t want to get modded. My point was that the tracking is occurring outside the home, so it isn’t relevant to the landline discussion. Then I added that most folks continue to use their mobile devices in the home – even when a landline is present, and that trackers and hackers can get to us via out landline, as well as the cable TV, and even the computer systems that run cars and home security are hackable (with a link).

For my friends who also have presbyopia; One benefit of Fluthering via the full site on the tablet is being able to pinch-to-zoom, which renders the whisper text legible.

I think it’s relevant, though, @hearkat, because it’s a reason to keep a landline. Our movements can’t be tracked by our landline use, nor our online purchases and our web surfing. I don’t have GPS in my car or a TV cable. Or a tablet.

I do use a cellphone (not a smartphone), and when I realize I’ve left mine at home I feel a bit anxious, even though I know I got through the first x decades of my life well enough without one. But that’s nothing compared with the loss I would feel if I gave up my landline.

Ultimately here, I answered the OP’s question not by telling her what she should do but by telling her what I’ve decided for myself and why. Your opinion and mine differ, it seems. I’m sure @janbb is interested in various points of view; we don’t have to reach consensus.

@Jeruba – I don’t think I’ve told Jan what to do, but also explained my choice and the experience of others in our area, since she and I live ~25 miles apart and we experienced the hurricane.

Yes, your movements can’t be tracked by your land line, because it’s a land line – so when you are using it, your location is well-established. Chances are, if your non-smartphone cell phone is less than a few years old, it still contains the components that can be tracked.

Our web-surfing and online purchases are being tracked whether they’re being conducted on a hard-wired desktop over a landline, or over a WiFi laptop on a cable/FiOS network, or via a mobile device on a wireless system.

I wasn’t challenging what you said were the benefits you find in having a landline, nor was I trying to convince you (or Jan) that my way is best. I was simply questioning why you posted an article about mobile device tracking in public places – where a land line can’t go – when the conversation was about keeping a land line in the home.

@hearkat, I haven’t accused you of anything. Jan asked what she should do. In answering her question indirectly (i.e., by stating my own preference), I gave my reasons by pointing out what I view as relevant considerations. That’s really all. I’‘m not seeking to argue or persuade.