Pros and cons of cutting the cord?

We finally turned ours off a few months ago have managed to survive without it. My wife harped on me for months to turn it off but it had been there all my life. Solicitors and my mom were really the only one's that called on it and mom passed a year and a half ago. When I realized it was 80 bucks a month to sit there and hardly ever ring I went ahead and had it turned off.

I have a landline thru my internet that costs about $30 a month from 1-VOIP. $30 gives me very low cost international phone service, Also I have a 3 story townhome & my wife & I do not carry our cell phones around all day. I have a phone on all 3 floors & in my detached garage. 1-VOIP also has cheaper plans without international. The 1-VOIP also takes messages and attaches the message to an email as well as forwarding the number to my cell phone.

We dumped our landline about a year ago and have yet to notice any detrimental quality of life changes.

No. Cell phones have Wi-Fi calling as a second method. Even our office “landlines” now run over the same internet connection.

Our cell service and internet are somewhat unreliable. Unfortunately the landline system has been allowed to deteriorate locally to the point that it’s not really much better. My wife’s family ranch still has the old fashioned wire phone lines, and no cell service. In wet weather the landline has so much noise on it, it’s unusable. And AT&T won’t fix it. AT&T is a horrible company.

After my parents and her parents passed, the only calls we got on our landline were political and sales nuisance calls. I finally convinced my bride that we could do without the landline phone.

quote:

Originally posted by Oz_Shadow:
No. Cell phones have Wi-Fi calling as a second method. Even our office “landlines” now run over the same internet connection.

I live in a rural area with almost non-existent cell signal at my house. Wi-Fi is OK until you have a power outage or the cable internet is down. We still keep a landline.

Landlines, whether traditional or VOIP, are associated with a physical address in the 911/e911 system. If you ever need to call 911 and are either unable to speak/continue to speak due to a health condition, or cannot speak for safety reasons due to an intruder, police/emergency responders can be dispatched to your address. You're SOL if you've only got a Cell Phone in that type of situation.

Cut the cord about four years ago.
We have good fiber internet now and use WiFi calling around the house. Cell service is fair here but works in an outage, which is extremely rare.
Also don’t use any conventional tv, just subscribe to specific channels as needed.
We’ve saved around two hundred a month that way and don’t miss anything.

I cut over to VoIP from POTS before I ever had a cell phone. And, yes, I've been listening to the every 30 min. low-batt. beep from the FIOS power supply ever since. I very rarely use any of the VoIP desk sets I still have in service, preferring a softphone on my desktop computer instead. In a way, it is still a "landline" in that there is a cable (optical) coming to the house, and the phones are connected to a wired in-home network (PoE GigE), but it is definitely not what the "Bell System" used to sell.

I'd be surprised if you could even obtain new tip and ring service at this point since the phone companies have all gone over to VoIP for their internal routing., the infrastructure is no longer in place.

I got rid of my landline in 1999. I was especially frustrated with the crappy AT&T answering machine (so-called) which seldom worked despite its high cost.

I cut mine 23 years ago. No regrets.

I briefly had a landline when I was in college, only for the pkg discount to get a lower rate for cable.
Never hooked a phone to it & would occasionally get a caller ID pop-up on the TV via the cable service [I guess].

We have one, cell service is spotty where we live. I guess I could switch the cell phones to Wi-Fi calling but that would get old fast.

Haven’t had a land line in 20 years. All I was getting were spam sales calls and political crap so I shut it off.

Have not ever once thought about getting it back.

Because three is two and two is one and one is none .

And you can't always get what you want

quote:

Originally posted by arfmel:
Unfortunately the landline system has been allowed to deteriorate locally to the point that it’s not really much better. My wife’s family ranch still has the old fashioned wire phone lines, and no cell service. In wet weather the landline has so much noise on it, it’s unusable. And AT&T won’t fix it. AT&T is a horrible company.

My father finally dumped his after trying to get it repaired for months.

There are perhaps a few reasons, depending on situation.

1) If you have no real need for a mobile phone. If you don't have an immediate need to be in contact, which is how we all lived for millennia, the old landline is sufficient.

2) Cell phones are expensive with a generally short life, whereas landline phones are cheap and last forever.

3) Cell phones can be too technically complex for some people. e.g. older people or those with intellectual limitations. My 92 yr old mother does ok with computers for basic tasks but has always struggled with her mobile. My sister could never manage a cell phone. She can barely use the simplest landline phone. We will all age into these issues.

4) Internet access on the phone is a huge security hole. Lots of people get scammed through their phone. Even smart people. I've seen this in my own family several times with older relatives, involving thousands of dollars. Criminals pretending to be helpful to my disabled and now demented sister have tried multiple times (and succeeded once) to get her to buy a smart phone to do her banking. The threat is real to all of us, and deserves caution.

5) Cell phones are constantly changing via the OS, or when an old phone is replaced. See #3 above, it can be a big problem for some.

6) Cell phones are a real radiation threat to the brain, and depending where you carry it, to other body organs. Any cordless phone is a threat, but we don't tend to carry the landline in our front pocket next to our nads all day.

quote:

Originally posted by UTsig:
We have one, cell service is spotty where we live. I guess I could switch the cell phones to Wi-Fi calling but that would get old fast.

If you enable wifi calling, it should switch when you leave the immediate area and switch automatically to regular cell, and back when you return.
Wifi calling will give you excellent service if your wifi itself is a good reliable connection.

We don't have a landline anymore. In fact, the hard phone line was knocked down by a tree years ago and is still wound up and sitting at the bottom of the phone poll across the street.