I know you just picked Saskatchewan because it sounds like Hickville, but some facts:
In 1984, SaskTel completed the world’s longest commercial fibre optic system, 3,268 kilometres
In 2002, it was the first to commercially deploy Internet Protocol (IP) video over digital subscriber line (DSL).
In 2006, it was the second North American company to offer HDTV channels via IPTV
SaskTel has been pretty good on the technology stuff, and you’re only going to get a dropped call if you go to a remote northern location, but that can happen anywhere.
Oh, wait, were you only talking about people who never step outside the concrete jungle? :rolleyes: Really, hon, we have high-speed internet and EVDO and everything!
Have land lines in both my apartment in Chicago and in Kansas City. Chicago, it comes with DSL (or at least AT&T has made it so difficult to get DSL without a land line that it’s not been worth it to try to get it without). In KC, I have telephone service as part of a cable/internet/phone package. Both my wife and I have pay-as-you-go cells, which is perfect for how little we use them For the most part, the land phone is used for me calling from Kansas City home to my wife in Chicago using the cable service’s unlimited US long distance.
I could never, ever use a cell only. My brother is the king of cells, having been using them since they were analog and huge and once having consumed 9950 minutes one month. I love my brother, but I don’t want to talk to him all the time. Having a pre-paid cell makes that possible. The vast majority of my clients are unaware that I have a cell, calling and leaving messages on the answering machine. I have a Google Voice account and am thinking of moving to that as a way of filtering (no, you not remembering how to delete an e-mail is not an emergency).
Because it’s presumed to be with you all the time, people assume that, if you have a cell, you’re available to answer their call. Which I don’t want to do. I have two, maybe three, clients who have my cell number. They are not going to call the cell until they’ve failed to reach me via both of my land-lines and it is a genuine emergency.
I do (among other things) computer support. Too many questions, especially the easy ones, can be answered on the phone. The problem is people don’t place any value on phone time, and it’s a bitch to get paid for it. I think I’d be happy to have a cell if I could get one attached to a 900 number that would charge $5 a minute.
Well, yeah, I assume people have it with them all the time, but I don’t assume they’re always available to answer it. There are many times when it’s not appropriate and/or even possible to answer it all the time.
land line for 30/mo unlimited LD. I hate cells, i hate people that call me on cells. i too have the $20/3 mos for emergency use only. traveling, dog shows, emergency.
All together a lot more duel landline/cell users than I was expecting. My experiences must be very skewed, I don’t even know who I could go to to use a landline if I needed to.
From my experience a cell phone can do most of the things that people have mentioned using their landlines for. Screening calls is simply a matter of letting it go to voicemail or just turning the phone off. I don’t have any issues with sound quality regardless of where I go, although I understand that certain areas aren’t as good about this. I just haven’t come across these areas, granted I’m not remarkably well traveled or anything. I don’t have any comfort issues with cells. That is a genuine preference, I just wonder if the comfort of the familiar doesn’t play into some peoples preferences.
I also didn’t realize that so many people still use the phone connection for internet. I suppose we aren’t quite at the place where wireless internet is common and cheap.
The emergency tracking, well you got me there. I hope that cells will have this feature in the near future. On the plus side for cells though, no advertisement calls! (yet anyway).
I’m really not trying to bash on landlines, I was just curious and I got my answers:)
I know a project manager for an international translation company here who is like this. He does not want to be bothered on his off hours and won’t even put his cellphone number on his cards.
For some reason, people assume that the more important you are, the more people have to be able to get ahold of you. Then your life becomes business 24/7. Sorry, but that’s not a life, that’s indentured servitude. My hours are my own. When I’m not being paid to work for you, I’m not working for you. The three clients who have my cell know that they’ll be billed for the time I have to spend on the phone with them, and that it will be a half hour of my time even if I’m off in five minutes. It keeps the bullshit down. My brother is a slave to his cell, and takes calls even during movies (he has the good graces to leave the theater to talk, but still).
I currently only have a mobile phone but when I get a permanent residence (instead of a six month lease) I’m going to get a landline and ditch the mobile if possible. I hate 'em.
If he doesn’t want to be bothered, then it should be as simple as not answering his phone. Does he somehow feel obligated to answer it if he sees that someone is calling him? If he does, then he can quickly remedy the problem by just turning his phone off.
We have one solely for security system monitoring. We get a discount from our homeowners’ insurer which more than covers the cost of monitoring, so we effectively get a free landline, or free security system, depending on how you look at it.
The fiancee’s mother calls on that line sometimes and occasionally one of us uses it to call the other one who’s at home.
We have both - we each have cell phones, and we have the landline at home. I’m one of those that’s not sold on the call quality on the cell phone - it consistently is of lower quality than my landline, even though the landline is VOIP through Comcast. Until call quality on the cell equals that of the quality on the landline, I’m not ditching it.
Possibly that works in your social circle, but I know far too many people that think having a cell obligates one to have it on at all times and be available for contact at all times as well. My brother, for instance.
A cell, to me, is like one of those house arrest radio tracking anklets.
I need to have a number to give to: the insurance company, the furnace repair guy, the tree care service, the credit card company, the bank, the store I have furniture on order with, the dentist …
I don’t want all of them to be able to get hold of me all the time. I don’t want all the people they sell my number to, to be able to get hold of me all the time.
Some of my co-workers use only cellphones, and it’s very annoying to hear their phones ring all the time, and then listen to them have a conversation with their bank. I don’t want to be in that category.
That, and my cellphone lives in my purse, which may be right next to me, or may be way at the other end of the house.
So I have multiple phone numbers for the same reason I have multiple email addresses. It lets me control who is able to get hold of me when. Friends and family get this phone number and email address, the rest of the world get that phone number and email address.
Landline (with DSL) and a cellphone for each of us. The cellphone is mostly useful because on Verizon we can talk to our kids for free. (Well, the one in Germany now we talk to free on Skype.) I like the landline because I won’t miss calls while it is charging, and it has a much better speakerphone. I do at least one conference call a week from home, and the quality is better. We also have four extensions, three cordless, so it is just as convenient to wander around with a landline. We have a fax also, which is yet another reason to have one.
We have a landline to the house and I have a cell phone, my mother does not. (She takes mine if she’s running errands and I’m at home.) We have had the same phone number for 28 years and I’ve had the same cellphone number for 10, which is the primary reason why we aren’t getting rid of either or porting anything or doing anything which would otherwise jeopardize the ability of people (many of whom are elderly) to reach us, having always known that our number was what it is.
Well, as others have pointed out, he could simply not answer it, but then the person calling might suspect that is the case or keep on trying until he does. And if he shuts it off, then he can’t take calls from friends. Back when his cellphone number was on his cards, he’d get calls from all over the world at all times of the night, as the company’s clients are worldwide, but most of the time he could not act on their queries, because everything he needed was locked up back in the office. He prefers just to avoid the hassle altogether, and I can’t say I blame him. But then, I’m pretty much anti-cellphone myself; never had one.
no landline. Three people in my household (my brother, my fiancee and myself). We all have our own cell phones and just don’t need a landline. Perhaps, once I have kids, I might. An extra way to be reached if their school/daycare needs to get a hold of me. Also, if the baby sitter would need to call out, I can’t expect him/her to have a cell or to use their own cell to get a hold of me.