Appeal to the collective wisdom - telephone service

[derekl_1963]

Over the weekend, Brenda and I were discussing dropping our landline. It just doesn't seem to make sense to continue paying for three phone numbers/two phone systems.

We came up with four basic objections;

• The first is emotional - we've had the landline number for nearly twenty years. it's widely distributed among family and friends. We have no answer to this objection.
  
  
• The second is the old chestnut - what if my battery runs down? That's answered by not letting the battery run down in the first place. Even if it does, and we lose power to the house, we have both the portable generator, the RV generator, and even a car recharger and one of the two cars would suffice to power/recharge the phone.
  
  
• Third is 911 - on a cell, the ability of CENCOM to automagically determine your address is shaky. We have no answer to this objection.
  
  
• The last is performance - sometimes/occasionally incoming calls will go to voice, and slightly more rarely we cannot make an outgoing call. We have no answer to this objection rather than looking into a picocell.
  
  

I know I have some of both types of folks (pure cell/mixed cell and land) on my FL - which category do you fall into and why did you make that choice?

Comments

[martianmooncrab.livejournal.com]

You need a court order to wiretap the landline, and lesser restrictions to listening in on cellular.

[hrollaug.livejournal.com]

I don't believe that claim is true.

It is easy to get the location of a given cellphone, but tapping follows the same rules as landline

In one way it's almost the reverse. Since a company is not allowed to make "blind" interstate calls soliciting business to cell phone, but are (if you are not on the "do not call" list) for land-lines.

If you have a pre-existing relationship with the company, the national do-not call list does not apply

[derekl1963.livejournal.com]

Of course 'pre existing' is interpreted pretty dang liberally, and 'charities' aren't limited at all.

[abrahe.livejournal.com]

You can port your home number over to your wireless carrier. Either replace one of your existing cell numbers or add a line to your existing plan.

[tradarcher.livejournal.com]

My advice is to keep both. We have a land line because we have always had it. But try to get a better deal with the phone company if there is low usage.
Cell phones, there are many family plans. Or share the same number. Keep the cell phones.

Other thoughts...

[hrollaug.livejournal.com]

If there is a regional power failure, there is no power going to the cell-tower. However the TelCo has it's own power sources and is better at maintaining service.

In the area where we live, when the power goes, we have no cell-coverage until power comes back on. While the land-line continues to work. Also the Tel-Co comes out, fairly quickly, and attaches a propane powered generator to their local switch, thus keeping it powered for long term.

Of course the above assumes that you are not using an IP-Phone from your Cable-Co. Those go out in power failures also..

If reliable phone coverage, in 99% of conditions is important to you, stick with a Tel-Co. Their "up" time is far better then any Cell-Co or Cable-Co service.

Re: Other thoughts...

[derekl1963.livejournal.com]

Wouldn't have an IP phone on a bet. Comcast isn't exactly the most reliable provider ever.

[shakeupsnow02.livejournal.com]

Never had a land line in my adult life.

Well - a girl I lived with did, but I didn't even know the number for it.

[derekl1963.livejournal.com]

You're not quite the demographic I'm asking. This question is more for us old farts. :)

[shakeupsnow02.livejournal.com]

I figured. You dinosaurs need to let go the wires. ;-)

Emergency Power

[printlyon.livejournal.com]

Check this out:
http://www.mysolarbackup.com/

[susanarendsee.livejournal.com]

Where I live the land line goes out more frequently then my cell phone. We have both because of this reason. I decreased our landline to the bare minimum service and have it hooked up to our answering machine to receive incoming calls while we're away. That way I don't use up alot of cell phone time(I use prepaid)on miscellaneous non essential incoming calls. I've wanted to drop our landline more then once. You could also try suspending service for a period of time to see if it works for you rather then disconnecting it completely. That is what I do when we are away from home for months at a time.

[talentus.livejournal.com]

Brandi and I got rid of our land line about 2-3 years ago. Haven't had any issues since then. Metropolitan Kitsap (hehe) has pretty decent coverage (Verizon) so we haven't really ever had an issue.