Foo - Thinking about dumping the land line

I don't use my land line much. Heck, I hardly use my cell phone. So I could easily ditch the land line and go cellular only. The only thing is our home alarm uses the land line. I'm sure they have a solution. I'll check on that Tuesday.

Anything else to be concerned about?

I dumped it years ago. . . and never regretted it.

I cut the cord a decade ago- but now thinking about going with VoIP for the home and pay as you go cell.

My parents ditched the landline and went with VoIP. It was Vonage, to be exact. $25 a month buys them unlimited everything, including international calls.

You can get unlimited domestic calls with Skype for $9 a month. Google is offering free calls to US numbers from gmail for the rest of the year (I don't know the pricing after that).

We have been on pay as you go cell for years, works great for me. We just cut the land line and switched to VOIP.ms for our home phone costs next to nothing, again paying only for what you use. We think the sound quality is actually better. ATT in our area is running a $15 month DSL line for internet, so that is what we did for internet, and run the phone off of that.

We've been very pleased.

I need to keep the landline for faxing purposes. Otherwise, I would think about dropping it and just getting the dry loop for DSL.

We have been on pay as you go cell for years, works great for me. We just cut the land line and switched to VOIP.ms for our home phone costs next to nothing, again paying only for what you use. We think the sound quality is actually better. ATT in our area is running a $15 month DSL line for internet, so that is what we did for internet, and run the phone off of that.

We've been very pleased.

$15/mo for an ATT dry loop only? Or do you have that bundled with other stuff to get that price? I've had the dry loop for a few months but it's $35/mo.

I'll be switching to pre-paid come Spring.

i've thought about it, but my concern is making an emergency call. Sometimes my phone drops calls left and right, other times it's fine. Some rooms get worse reception in general and let's face it, voice quality on a cell is sometimes horrible because of the encoding/compression they do. Maybe dialing 911 gives you better signal power and network resources, i'm not about to test it though.

Also, emergency responders use the phone number to determine where to send help. Cell phones can do this, but I'm not sure how quickly the location data is sent (in the initial call setup message or after the call is received) or how accurate it is. For those living in a multi-unit complex, this might be useful. I think my landline is $10 a month + taxes (of course), but I also get DSL and cell lumped together as a package.

^^^ Mrs. MillCreek just got a third-generation iPhone. A great toy, but boy is it a lousy telephone in terms of reception and call clarity. Her old Samsung was a much better telephone.

I only have the landline for DSL -- I don't have an acutal telephone device hooked up to it.

FWIW, my old Samsung cell, which I'm still using, is an awful phone.

Anybody tried Ooma, the free VOIP but you have to buy the equipment at approx $175? I dropped the landline and intended to drop monthly billing for phone but got a great deal on the triple package from Brighthouse when Comcast raised their rates after the 6 mo trial. Have a 2 yr lock on rate but am having some reception problems with Brighthouse (they are convering my interior wires to RG6 from RG59 tomorrow!) The only reason I need a landline, working from home, listen to conference calls - and don't want to burn cell minutes. Prior to Brighthouse, tried to use Magic Jack when had Comcast, but they changed their policy of unlimited domestic calls to exclude conference numbers, unless the conference coordination was through them.

Skijor, $15 month for Dry loop DSL. AT&T's been running a special for about a month, at least in our region (I think it is a national thing?). I'm in Michigan.

I thought about Ooma, but the problem I had with them was that I don't believe that the business model is sustainable (income only from equipment sales).

I paid about $50 for a ATA phone adapter, and we have paid about $3 for the first month in calls, but it basically is pay for what you need. Add $25 to your account when needed, they send you a reminder if you get below a certain balance.

Skijor, $15 month for Dry loop DSL. AT&T's been running a special for about a month, at least in our region (I think it is a national thing?). I'm in Michigan.

I thought about Ooma, but the problem I had with them was that I don't believe that the business model is sustainable (income only from equipment sales).

I paid about $50 for a ATA phone adapter, and we have paid about $3 for the first month in calls, but it basically is pay for what you need. Add $25 to your account when needed, they send you a reminder if you get below a certain balance.

Ah, must be for new customers only. Still, I'll call. I've gotten $ knocked off my bill more than once simply by asking if there are any specials.

The other problem with using a cellphone only is that they're often misplaced; it's much easier to have multiple phones around your home so you can just pick it up and dial. My parent's house has terrible reception anyways. What I ended up doing for them was setting up with Vonage and wiring that into the telephone box outside of the house -- now it's indistinguishable service from a normal phone setup. In some ways it's better because they can take the adapter with them and the phone number moves too, and it features all of the bells and whistles one could want.

Well, it turns out I can't dump the land line after all. DSL Dry Loop isn't available here. No land line = no internet. Can't have that!

So, now to find the absolute minimum service plan for the land line.

I don't use my land line much. Heck, I hardly use my cell phone. So I could easily ditch the land line and go cellular only. The only thing is our home alarm uses the land line. I'm sure they have a solution. I'll check on that Tuesday.

Anything else to be concerned about?

Hurricanes. Having been through, Katrina, Ivan, Gustav. No power for days, and cell phones didn't generally work.