Finally cut the cord...

After living for almost 25 years in my house, I finally cancelled my land line phone. I was paying for daily begging and scamming calls (No, you're NOT from Microsoft calling to fix a virus on my computer!), and little else. I've still got a cell phone and local google voice number, so I'm not cut off totally. Feels strange, though. I guess it's part of the mindset that "I'm finally somebody because I'm in the phone book". If it wasn't for cable news shows, that cord would be cut, too.

I'm looking forward to the day I can cut my land line. Unfortunately, that won't happen until my youngest daughter has a cell phone, and that isn't happening for 4 more years.

My wife and I have been living in our house for 6 years now and have never once had a land line phone. You won't miss it at all.

sooner.boomer said:

After living for almost 25 years in my house, I finally cancelled my land line phone. I was paying for daily begging and scamming calls (No, you're NOT from Microsoft calling to fix a virus on my computer!), and little else. I've still got a cell phone and local google voice number, so I'm not cut off totally. Feels strange, though. I guess it's part of the mindset that "I'm finally somebody because I'm in the phone book". If it wasn't for cable news shows, that cord would be cut, too.

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A buddy of mine, who is a Sys Admin, runs a Windows VM on his Linux box. He got one of those "Microsoft" calls. So he let the guy talk him through totally trashing his VM, with the object, of course, being that the tech calling will then charge you a lot of money to "fix" the stuff that he made you break.

Since it was a VM, my friend when through all of it. When it was done, the caller asked him to reboot and tell him how it looked. he just respawned the VM, and then told the caller that everything was great! The caller was very confused, and asked him to try it again.

Finally, my friend said, "Look. We both know that you are not from Microsoft, and now you've spent well over an hour on the phone with me, and you aren't going to get a penny out of me. If you know so much about computers, why don't you go get a real job with a weekly paycheck and stop doing this to people?"

The guy hung up and they haven't called him since. :wink:

it's funny, (well first it is pathetic that my wife and I still have a land-line, but here's the funny part): my in-laws have newer computers and iPhones than my wife and I do...yep, both my father-in-law and my mother in law have newer computers, and my mother-in-law just got the iPhone 6.

They cut their land-line years ago...I told my wife to cut ours, but instead, she let AT&T talk her into some U-verse service thing.

We live in the middle of no-where California, so there isn't any competition (there is one cable provider and one phone provider). Would you believe service sucks?

Anyway, yes, I can't believe I am paying monthly for scammers and idiots to bug us. I actually *never* answer the phone; I let the answering machine pick up *everything* and if a human I know (& want to talk to) starts leaving a message, I pick it up (I tell people we know that we screen all our calls and to definitely leave a message).

(starting to go off-topic here, but I always hated phones...I'm the type of guy who would, at work, instead of calling, get up and walk over to your office...that's a lot tougher now that I my workgroup is all over the state!).

Q. Who was Alexander Graham Kowolski?

A. He was the first Telephone Pole.

tmacklin said:

Q. Who was Alexander Graham Kowolski?

A. He was the first Telephone Pole.

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:eyeroll:

Guess Im keeping mine. Wife says if we lose power the others do not work cuz they are wireless.
We do have cells,but they can go down also.I think we need our land line for the internet too. We dont have dial-up,but the router(?) runs thru the land line.(?)
I do also believe,even if you dont have your land line phone on(activated,hooked up???) these days it's set up so you can still dial out to 911.

PS...I me-self do not own a cell,I use my work phone and thats a "Flip-Open" :lol:

I only had a cell phone from 1999-2009. I was somewhat of cell phone snob and turned my nose up at landlines. I got a landline (fios) when I bought a house. The thing I noticed is that cell phones kinda suck. When on a cell phone people sound like they are talking through a can(low bandwidth) and break-up often. The interruptions are the congested networks, but I wonder if the low bandwidth is from those Bluetooths people like to wear.

My wife recently added a land line because doing so reduced the cost of our internet/cable. I soon realized the reason why, they sell your juice. That phone rings with nothing but sales and crap calls. I actually enjoy it because it gives me something to do when I am feeling ornery. I like to see how long I can get them to hold in addition to other games. I generally keep the ringer turned down to nothing.

qquake2k said:

The only reason I keep a landline is for my alarm system.

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Hmm. I use Smith and Wesson. I don't need no stinking alarm system.

We held on to our land line for the longest time for two reasons: during a hurricane we beleived the cell towers would be overloaded or offline and we did not trust E911 service.

Well, in 2008 when Ike hit....our landline went dead! There went that objection. Then a small emergency necessitated the calling of 911 from a cell phone at my house and, well, E911 worked. They got the lat/long coordinates and cell tower info instantly along with confirmation of the address and the appropriate emergency jurisdiction responded rapidly. We disconnected the landline soon after.

We ditched our landline 4-5 years ago and never looked back. It was a bit weird psychologically at first, but with a handful of cell phones in the house there's never been any issues. The last time we had a big power outage several years back (the famous SoCal grid crash), the landlines went down anyway and only the mobiles worked.

Here I go again. I just got done getting hammered on the head in John Coker's "smart phone survey", about why a land line is better for me than using a mobile phone. I truly understand why some people prefer the mobile phone, but you have to know a persons situation. My job is in my home. All of my clients have fax machines or scanners, that they send me the work I need to do. I really can't make that migration. Sure, I buy a burner phone that will last me from March till the end of a year, for when I am on the road going to launches and such. But it's not a necessity. It's just in case I get stranded. As far as scam and or, telemarketers & robo calls, I just ignore them. Especially when caller ID says, "private caller" or "out of area", or, nothing at all. Usually they just hang up. In my case, if I don't know who's calling, I don't need to answer. I do have an answer machine. Yes, they're being screened. Big deal! I do have a wireless LL phone, but I also have a direct connect el-cheapo wall phone in case the power goes out. Bottom line, it's almost at a 50/50 point of LL users and mobile users, according to some statistics I read. Nah! I ain't giving up my land line anytime soon. Better reception and my calls don't get dropped. YES...that still does happen to mobile users sometimes.

I guess I have a hybrid setup. No landline but VoIP and wireless internet. I guess I could drag the computer around with me...sort of a big cellphone...buying extension cords or a generator is a bit excessive I think...

You want bad connections, try VoIP phone through wireless internet connection to cell phone, when it's not choppy it's like talking over a can-to-can connection a mile long.

Gave up the landline back about 10 years ago when Comcrap was pushing their initial iteration of what's now called "Triple Play".

I'd give that up too if I could get Mrs. OD to switch to a smartphone. I've managed to get her talking on our Panasonic wireless phones so I figure any day now...

Last summer we had terrible thunderstorm that took out my land line or some out-of-the-house electronics or my phone itself. I was told that if a technician just walked in my house, that alone would be $55. Well, it turns out there no problems except the inside phone itself. The technician reminded me (very politely) of the fee even though he did nothing of use inside. I remarked, "Well, to tell you the truth, I've been thinking of cutting this line and just using my cell phone." He replied, "Cell phones are killing us." The bill for the $55 never arrived.

Very tempting. Except for a small handful of people, our landline is as useless as others have noted. We need to find a different internet service provider first however as we are on Century Link DSL...and we don't have cable TV run to the house (not that I want to do business with Comcast anyway....)

The security system is no longer a problem. Just upgraded to one that has its own cellular radio in the main panel. No more land line connection for it.

dward said:

I only had a cell phone from 1999-2009. I was somewhat of cell phone snob and turned my nose up at landlines. I got a landline (fios) when I bought a house. The thing I noticed is that cell phones kinda suck. When on a cell phone people sound like they are talking through a can(low bandwidth) and break-up often. The interruptions are the congested networks, but I wonder if the low bandwidth is from those Bluetooths people like to wear.

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GSM is actually a very complex system and they can only achieve so much throughput with so little output power from the actual cell phones. There is a tremendous amount of redundancy built into your cell phone so that you can actually talk to the tower. There really isn't too much interference because the cell phone bands are fairly wide and there isn't much equipment that operates in the same frequency range or any at all actually, other than low-power research devices. Bluetooth devices operate at frequencies that are several times higher than cell phones (900 MHz vs. 2.4 GHz) and they are frequency hopping so it is unlikely that they are transmitting on the same frequency (called an ARFCN) that your cell phone uses. Cell phone audio codec suck too, that is why VOIP is so much better.

MichaelRapp said:

We held on to our land line for the longest time for two reasons: during a hurricane we beleived the cell towers would be overloaded or offline and we did not trust E911 service.

Well, in 2008 when Ike hit....our landline went dead! There went that objection. Then a small emergency necessitated the calling of 911 from a cell phone at my house and, well, E911 worked. They got the lat/long coordinates and cell tower info instantly along with confirmation of the address and the appropriate emergency jurisdiction responded rapidly. We disconnected the landline soon after.

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Exactly my experience...we were staying with my wife's aunt in NJ, when Hurricane Sandy hit...she had a landline, but no cell phone (for pretty much the reasons you outlined, "the landline will work, but the cell towers will go out").

Well, the phone lines were knocked down, and because "everybody" has cell phones, they likely made getting the cell towers back up a priority, because we had cell service pretty much the whole time, but it was days before the land line was fixed.

We never figured out how long it took for them to get the land line fixed...as soon as the stores open, we went with her Aunt to get her a cell phone, and we ditched the land line.

If people are hanging on to a landline solely for an emergency, and aren't getting a cell phone -- I would advise you to rethink your assumptions.

I travel to Europe every two-three years for work and in the early 2000s I was astounded by how far ahead the cell phone infrastructure was over there. Everyone had cell phones, no one had landlines at home, and their typical phone was far more advanced than our typical one at the time.

When a call comes in to the 911 center from a land line phone, the operator sees an address on the computer screen showing the exact location of the phone, and help is dispatched immediately. If a call is made from a cell phone that has G.P.S. enabled in it, like most of today's smart phones, the operator can eventually find the caller through latitude and longitude positioning, but it takes a few minutes. The worst-case scenario is a 911 call made from an older cellphone that doesn't have G.P.S. There's no way for the operator to pinpoint its location.


https://www.consumerreports.org/cro...bout-911-and-disconnected-landlines/index.htm

Does everyone have a cell that's in your house? Does everyone have their #s?.Can someone in your home be reached/called/contacted in an emergency without the landline?

Landlines don't run on batteries.

Back in the day,some places wouldn't let you order takeout over the phone unless you gave them had a landline # to call back.
One cant order Marshmellons using a cell phone. Has to be a landline.

Anywhoo---Ill always have a landline. Who knows,maybe when they come,Ill need it(landline) for reasons unknown to me at this time,like,maybe save the world or some sci-fi thing.

We have a land line. There is no phone hooked up to it and there hasn't been for some time.

The ONLY reason we have it, is it's cheaper than not having it. I get FIOS internet and TV, and the Triple Bundle is cheaper than the double bundle, so we have the unused phone line. I guess technically it's not a land line since it's VOIP, but it's considered a landline by 911 operators as it's provided by the LEC.