Foo - Who has eliminated their home phone landline?

Our telephone landline is relatively expensive and we rarely use it. My wife suggested that we cancel it and just rely on cellphones.

After thinking about it I've come up with some pros and cons for our situation-
Pros:
1) Save lots of money, up to $600 per year

Cons:
1) Cellphone service in my area is not good, sometimes we can't get a good signal throughout out house, only on one end.
2) I put my cellphone on the table when I come home and it stays there, I can't hear it in the other end of our house.
3) Between us we would have 2 different numbers, when do I give out my number, when do I give out my wife's number?
4) How permanent is a cellphone #? I have heard that you can take your number to another carrier but I've also heard that in reality this doesn't work very well.
5) Caller ID on cellphones is worthless.


Currently we have telephone with one company, and cable TV and internet with another company. Our cable company offers digital phone, but their service is so unrelaible that I wouldn't trust them with my phone service. We are considering changing to Verizon FIOS and then we could have TV, internet and phone with the same company. This would reduce what we pay for phone.

We had a cordless phone at home for a long time, and it finally quit working. My wife had added an answering machine and a caller ID box to this, which made for a big bundle of wiring and a big appetite for batteries. When the cordless phone quit I bought a new one that had 2 handsets and integrated caller ID and answering machine. It put everything into one small unit and simplified the wiring. I noticed when shopping that BestBuy had a cordless phone system with bluetooth that would connect to your cellphone. So come home, set your cellphone next to the base unit, and then the cordless handsets work just like your normal landline.

Years and years ago.
I haven't had a land line in over a decade.
Closest I have to a land line now is a Skype number.

I used Vonage for 3 years, voip service from the cable company for a year and now I'm on my 2nd year with Magic Jack.

I despise cell phones and try to limit my cellphone ownership to times of extreme need.

4) How permanent is a cellphone #? I have heard that you can take your number to another carrier but I've also heard that in reality this doesn't work very well.I did this with my company phone a couple years ago. They released it and I took the number and replaced my personal phone with the work number. It only took a few minutes.

We kept the home phone for 9-1-1 and the reverse 9-1-1 calls.

Cell phone and Magic Jack, Ice storm got the phone line several years ago, it wasn't being used.

For the $$ Magic Jack is hard to beat. $35 month unlimited Cricket.

I still have a landline and have no intentions of giving it up anytime soon.

Is anyone surprised?

Shifted over to Vonage about 5 years ago. Since about 1.5 years ago, I haven't even used that. That said, I'm fortunate in that I live in an area with good cell service and I have (IMO) a good carrier (Verizon). True, when The Big One hits the bay area, we'll temporarily lose cell service and internet and the only thing working might well be landlines. That said, I'm willing to take that chance - I'd rather do that than pump money in to an outdated business model.

I have a cell phone issued by my company that I am given free reign on, so I don't plan on getting a land line when I move this summer. $0/mo for unlimited everything and the best coverage in the area sounds good to me.

Cut the cord about a decade ago. Tried phone service through the cable company, but dunno if the hardware used, the install, or just their network made the quality suck. Recently switched to Tracfone prepaid and Google Talk (or is it Voice?) to initiate calls from the home.

Have been without a landline since the mid 90's.

My Mom has one - and a cell phone that my brother got her (from his plan) for emergencies when traveling. BTW - Mom was quite startled this past Winter when at 2 am her landline phone went off - and kept going off - evidently Rochester is on a plan where there is an alert in the neighborhood (which there was - there was an armed person the cops were looking for) - then it rings. Mom does not get phone calls past 8 pm - so at 2 am - her hair stood up on end I guess...

Dropped the land line back in 2000. Haven't looked back. Don't miss it. That might change as the kiddos get older and are able to stay home alone & such.

Dropped the land line back in 2000. Haven't looked back. Don't miss it. That might change as the kiddos get older and are able to stay home alone & such.

My Tracfone started out life in the household as the emergency line if both me and my wife (both of us had contracted service at the time) were out and the kids were home alone. When my other stepdaughter moved in, she thought she was being slick by handing out that number to her friends. Busted her for using it, so she started erasing the call logs and txt logs to hide her continual use of it. Should have seen the look on her face when I busted her again (despite the log clearing), as she was unaware that the airtime display decreased every time she used the phone...

about 7 years ago I got rid of verizon land line and used vonage (voip). 27 bucks a month was pretty nice, but I was paying for 2 cell phones also anyways. about 3 years ago I dropped the vonage and my wife and I use our cell phones exclusively. I never give out her number, unless its one of her friends.

Back in the late 90's, working in the cellphone industry, the "mission" was to kill landlines for good. It was discussed extensible on meetings and plans were prepared/priced accordingly.

Before that, early 90's, same kind of war was waged against the beeper/pager industry. On that one, sms technology was weaponized and used to destroy the pager industry with great success.

Back in the late 90's, working in the cellphone industry, the "mission" was to kill landlines for good. It was discussed extensible on meetings and plans were prepared/priced accordingly.

Before that, early 90's, same kind of war was waged against the beeper/pager industry. On that one, sms technology was weaponized and used to destroy the pager industry with great success.

You are saying it like it is a bad thing.

I tossed mine a few years ago. I do have a vonage line for work nowadays.

I haven't had a land line for about 5 years, when I (semi) moved out of my parents house for college. I've never lived anywhere long enough to worry about getting a number, and having it follow me. My wife and I both have cell phones with coverage everywhere we go. A hard line, while arguably more reliable, seems like unneeded redundancy for the price. I'll probably never have a land line until I settle in a permanent location about 6+ years from now. By then it will all be VOIP anyways...

edit: My how time flies away! It has really been more like 8 years now that I think about it :)

If no one else has said it yet.. here's what I did..

1. Port the number over to voip.ms.

2. Setup an asterisk pbx and/or use the pbx features of voip.ms.

3. Get an ATA or hack a vonage ATA for connecting to voip.ms.

4. Connect the ATA to your home wiring and disconnect the telco from the home wiring.

5. Enjoy phones throughout your house for $1.50/mo plus $.0149 per minute.

(You can forward the number to your cell phone if you want to also)

I saved about $40/mo this way and as a bonus it makes it illegal for anyone using an autodialer that doesn't have explicit permission to call you.

I switched to Vonage back in 2003-ish. Since then I swapped up to VoicePulse. Probably should try something like voip.ms once I have a few days to play with it.

We dropped our land line about eight years ago. We do have an extra cell phone, for $10 a month, which doubles as a "house" phone and kid phone. We spend a pretty significant amount on our cell service. Between the data plans and the number of minutes we need, it adds up pretty quickly.

I dropped the land line earlier this year, and don't miss it. Minimal cellphone use serves my needs now.

my parents haven't dropped the landline. We rarely use it but my parents say they need it. No one even answers the phone unless I call their cellphone. /sigh
I rarely use my cellphone too. Cancelled texting because it was a annoyance in my life although I can receive texts but cannot send them.. Without texting none of my friends want to contact me. The worst is when I call them and they text me "why did you call me? why don't you text me?" :(

1) Cellphone service in my area is not good, sometimes we can't get a good signal throughout out house, only on one end.
skype could be your other option if your cellphone does not have a strong enough signal.
2) I put my cellphone on the table when I come home and it stays there, I can't hear it in the other end of our house.
Put it in your pocket? Or does the signal get cut off if you go to the other end of your house?
3) Between us we would have 2 different numbers, when do I give out my number, when do I give out my wife's number?
I would just give out my own phone number.

I have a fictitious law firm on my answering machine and on the voice thing on
the cell phone. Does away with the telemarketers real fast.

"This is Shirley at Adams and Whippet law firm, due to the death of Mr. Adams
we are no longer accepting new clients. If you are currently a client, please
email your information to us. Thank you."

We dropped AT&T a few years ago and got an Ooma hub (http://www.ooma.com/). This is basically free VOIP within the USA, and pennies per minute for international calls.

Costco, Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002O3W4LE?ie=UTF8), et al. (http://www.ooma.com/buy/where-to-buy/), sell the hub for around $200. There are no monthly fees unless you opt for premium services.

We were able to port our landline number over to Ooma ($40), so we still have the same number as when we were AT&T customers.

The sound quality with Ooma is slightly inferior to what we experienced with AT&T, but we have an older version of their hub. Supposedly the new versions have superior sound quality. Too, Ooma has had a couple of network outages (that we know of) since we've been customers, but on the whole, it has been very nice saving $75/month. Yes, you have to spend around a little money to get the Ooma hub, but the break-even for us was 3 months.

I have a fictitious law firm on my answering machine and on the voice thing on
the cell phone. Does away with the telemarketers real fast.

"This is Shirley at Adams and Whippet law firm, due to the death of Mr. Adams
we are no longer accepting new clients. If you are currently a client, please
email your information to us. Thank you."

OK - that's brilliant.

Friends of mine both have cell phones and a landline that they hardly use - in fact, the only time the phone rings it's a) a telemarketer, or b) one of their parents. I asked, why not ditch the landline, then? The conversation:

Her: Well, my folks only know how to dial the house number
Me: Don't they know your cell number?
Her: Well, yes, but they don't understand how to dial it
Me: Dialing a cell phone is no different than dialing your landline.
Her: You know that and I know that, but they can't seem to figure that one out.

I haven't had a landline since I moved to Seattle 6 years ago. I had one in Cincinnati only because I bundled things for cost effectiveness. Per the discount with my wife's employer, our cell phones are dirt cheap and that's all we need.

I dropped my landline and use Skype as my primary phone. For $3/month you can get unlimited calling to any phone number in US and Canada, and for $30/year you can get a number that people can call you one. So my total spending on a phone line for the year is about $60.

the only thing is you must be connected to the internet.. it's a pain in the butt when my internet goes down

if you have a portable wifi device you can make and receive calls anywhere you can get a wifi signal

I personally only have a cellphone, but that's only because I haven't settled in a particular place yet. My parents ditched their typical landline and moved over to Vonage. It's $25 bucks a month for unlimited local and long distance, including most other countries. They ported the number over too. There's no way I can see using a cellphone exclusively as practical. Batteries fail, phones get misplaced, they can only be in one place at a time, and service changes depending on where I go in the house. The sound quality is indistinguishable from what we had with AT&T.

I like and will keep my Landline. It offers something that the fancy cell, and other communication devices don't. Legal protection from unwanted listening, tapping, and other type of legal things that technology has not caught up just yet. I don't have to worry about powering it up all the time. The state government offers some financial help in my state if you cannot afford a phone. Besides, I don't have much use for any type of phones anyway.