How many Dopers are maintaining traditional home phone service?
We reluctantly ditched ours a few months ago, because quality was bad (interference on the line, sometimes bad enough to make it hard to understand conversations) and we don’t get or make that many phone calls. It was a bit hard to get used to having a cellphone with or near us at all times (especially important when I’m on call) but it’s worked out OK.
Sort of. I have a landline phone (or as I call it, a regular phone) but it works through my internet connection.
Landline only, but only for local calling. I have no long distance carrier, and I use Google-phone for all calls which would otherwise be toll for long distance. Less than one a month of those. So technically, I would be Option 4, but I chose Option 1.
Same as Litle Nemo. I have a landline phone that is part of our cable/internet package but not one through the local traditional phone company. So I’m not sure how that ranks.
We also have cell phones, naturally.
It might have been useful to break out “Traditional (copper) landline service like Ma Bell used to provide” and “Cable/Digital/VoIP landline service through an internet connection.” I’d wager that a large proportion of people who have a home landline have the latter. (It’s running about 10/90% when I poll my ‘cut the cord’ audiences up here in tradition land.)
For those who aren’t aware, if you have internet, you can get good-quality landline service with all the bells and whistles for about $13 a month. You do NOT need to use your cable provider’s bundled option.
I have one connected to my internet service and it is absolutely free for calls anywhere in the U.S. or Canada and trivial for anywhere else. The sound quality beats the shit out of my iPhone. It is weird how most technology has progressed nicely except for cell phone voice quality that is vastly inferior to even a 1950’s era phone. However, I have no idea why anyone with a home phone connection would pay much of anything for landline service these days let alone long-distance. A simple and cheap interface is all you need to talk as long as you want for free (or nearly so).
Gave up landline after leaving Bangkok last year. Now it’s cellphone only, baby.
No phones ever had better voice quality than genuine Bell equipment, especially from the end of the war until the breakup in 1970s.
You could get bad connections, especially on long distance or country service, but in general, Ma Bell worked her ass off to keep that 100-3200Hz channel as clear and undistorted as possible, and having solid copper connections end to end, with no multiplexing, digitization, microwave links etc. made it possible.
(In the early 1990s I worked for a telephony company whose owner had years of formal audio-quality testing, and he HATED the new digital cell phones as a result.)
I have a landline and a cell phone, but for the most part I normally use my cell phone to call out, not to receive calls (as a result it is turned off most of the time). Being an old fart, I have never wrapped my head around the idea that people should be available 24/7/365. Phone my landline; if I don’t answer then leave a message.
I have a traditional landline which I use for 98% or so of my phone calls and a cell phone which I use for 2% or so of my phone calls. [without the risk of a car breakdown I wouldn’t bother with a cell phone].
I have a landline through my ISP, mostly because I live in the shadow a mountain (well, ridge) and cell phone service is shaky.
Cable landline. Same phone number we’ve had since the Kennedy administration. It’s cheap, and also necessary because our cell reception is erratic.
But we do have cell phones for when we’re on the road.
We got rid of our landline a couple years ago when we realized that literally the only people that every called it were telemarketers.
This house was built 10 years ago and there is a line to the house but there has never been a handset connected in the house. Phone company used to require an active phone service for ADSL connections. When Naked ADSL (ADSL without a phone service) was available, we ditched the landline. The line has now been converted to VDSL.
We have VoIP, but through our mobile phones rather than using landline-style handsets.
We have a landline. It works when the power goes out for several days. My cell has to be charged every day and other options don’t work without power.
Cell phone service sucks, at best, and is non-existent many places in my area, like my living room or front yard (barely works in the kitchen). If it wasn’t for the convenience while traveling, I’d dump it. I even have my cell number permanently programmed to ring through to my landline if the cell is busy, there’s no answer, or if it’s turned off. So I turn it off when I’m home and get service quality for incoming cell calls equal to a direct landline. Makes it hard to get text messages, though.
Telemarketers no longer make such a distinction, and will call every possible number. Since most are immune from the law, why should they care? A number is a number is a sucker.
I haven’t had a landline in about 8 years. No reason to, really.
I work from home taking customer service calls, so I have a landline strictly for that. I’ve thought about getting rid of it, my employer prefers we use a land line but we don’t have to. I like keeping it separate, I don’t have anybody beeping in while I’m on work calls. I also blocked all calls except those from my employer and my cell phone (in case I need to test the line). It’s also nice to have a backup if my cell phone isn’t working for some reason.
It costs $40/month, which I think is too expensive, but I deduct it as a business expense.
Two mobile phones for voice and a magicjack VOIP gizmo connected to a fax machine for my wife’s business. Costs IIRC $40 per *year *for the fax line. Obviously we could connect a conventional telephone and make voice calls over that line if we wanted. But we never have and probably never will.
I dropped my landline some where in college so I haven’t had one in going on 12 years now. I can’t think of any reason I’d want one short of a long term disruption in power and even then there are things higher on my priority list then a phone.