Here’s the deal: We live waaaay out in the boonies. Cable will not be here in the lifetime of living man.
We get TV over satellite. Internet comes from one of those things that works from a cell phone tower and plugs into a jump-drive connection on the computer.
Some cell phones work here and obviously, we have selected a company that has coverage at this location.
The only thing I think we might need a land-line for is ordering PPV movies on the TV and that’s about a once a year thing we can live without.
What am I overlooking, oh Teeming Millions? Tell me why I need to continue to pay AT&T $60 per month, please?
We drop the land line we have to pay $5 more to DISH each month.
Really bad weather, land line might be the only thing that works.
What kind of plan on the cell phone? Make a lot of local calls that would add up?
Both daughters are cell only but not in the boonies.
Lots of folks are cell only now.
How important is the $60 for you?
Try it and see. Not too expensive to add the land line back in 6 months or so.
YMMV
Good to know that we can keep Dish for only $5 extra per month.
We never use our “free minutes” up as it is. Few local calls. Also, we have Southern Link, which has radio connection to other Link subscribers, so calls within the family don’t count towards minutes.
The $60 per month isn’t all that critical in the big picture of things, but I’m thinking “Why throw $60 away”. Besides, AT&T has pissed us off. Poor wire performance is what forced us away from dial-up and onto the other internet system in the first place.
I dropped my landline a few months ago. It hardly ever got used, and was only around because we used DSL. Switched to cable modem, saved $20/month into the deal. I live in a good-sized town with dense cell coverage, so I haven’t had any problems. Also, no more annoying robo-calls! (The passing of the Year of the Election probably had more to do with that though.)
I was thinking of dropping my landline, until someone mentioned that many apartment intercoms use the tenants’ landlines instead of a separate wiring system. Mine does. I really don’t want my cellphone to ring every time someone tries my code.
Given a choice between which to drop, I would drop the cell phone. I can never hear properly on the cell, it’s off more often than it’s on because of rehearsals, recordings or lessons. I’ll probably just stop talking on the phone if they ever stop landlines altogether.
Oh, yeah - in that last power out we had that lasted 24 hours, we were extra screwed because the cell phone was out of juice, and we had stupid phones on the landline that needed to be plugged in. That got changed within a day of the power coming back.
We are thinking of dropping ours, as the only people who ever seem to call us are telemarketers and my mother-in-law, who can’t seem to remember that we have cell phones. But we disconnected the land line five weeks ago for a remodeling project and haven’t hooked it back up, and haven’t missed it a bit.
What I like having it for is having a number to give out to people to whom you must give a number, but to whom you never want to speak. Have to fill out a form that demands a phone, but you don’t want them to bother you? Give 'em the land line number, and let 'em talk to the machine. I hate to lose that. I’d like to have a cell phone with two numbers, one for friends, family and people I want to hear from (the doctor’s office), and one for the cable company trying to sell me an upgrade. (I want the cable company’s number in my memory, because I have to call them often enough for service.)
We were out of power 24 days after one of the hurricanes. Nine days after another one, and four to five days without power is not uncommon. However, we’ve got a portable generator that will power everything except central heat and air, so we should always be able to charge cell phones.
I have never lived in a rural area, so I don’t know if that’s a standard rate for telephone service in the boonies.
However, here in the big city, telephone companies routinely sign people up for unlimited local calling plans. When I had DSL, I called and asked them to switch me to a bare-bones service in which I had to pay a nickel for each local outgoing call, no long distance provider, no caller ID, nothing. My phone bill went from around $40 to about $9 per month. If you are not sure if you want to drop your landline entirely, you may want to investigate other calling plans first.
We’re in the same circumstances, Jonathan. Out in the boonies with the added plus of decrepit phone lines that won’t support DSL. In severe weather (flooding) our landline goes out.
We found that we were using our cells 99% of the time, and paying Verizon $50.00 a month for nothing. When we get our satellite internet, Verizon will get the boot.
I don’t see a down-side. We, too, have a portable gennie for power outages. And an obnoxious Border Collie for security. We’re good to go.
Telemarketers seem to only call on land lines. I can’t think of any disadvantage to dropping a land line, other than it might still work in some situations where your cell service is out. How reliable is your cell phone service? If the answer is “pretty good”, I’d drop the land line.
Out of curiousity, how well do those jump drive internet things work? Do you play any online games? Any problems with downloads or service “stuttering” or being interrupted?
I use GrandCentral for that. I have it set up to ring my phones for people I know (you can have it ring some or all of your phones for different groups) and go directly to voicemail for others. Also, you can block numbers so that they get the “this number is no longer in service” message when they call again. Not sure if that really makes any difference, but it makes me feel better…
Works great. However, I personally wouldn’t want to get rid of my land line, even though I barely ever make phone calls (even on my cell). I’ve had far more occasions of the cell network being down than my landline (one especially annoying instance was after an earthquake, when the cell network was completely saturated but my landline worked perfectly fine), and the security of being able to make a call any time is worth the relatively small cost to me. Also, I find the landline phone a lot more comfortable for the few times when I do need to make a long call.
I haven’t had a landline since October 2007, and don’t miss it at all. It doesn’t affect the internet here at all. It isn’t really that uncommon out here for people not to have a landline. Especially with younger people/college kids.
We are very happy with it, because previously we were lucky to get 24kbs on our dial up. This thing gets us 115 kbs, about 5X better. The thing says we’re usually at 58 to 66 % of capacity, so I guess if we were in a better location our speed would be even higher. Don’t know about internet games, but we can now watch YouTube! Yea!
There may be an unwanted disconnect once or twice a day, but not enough to annoy. With the land line we were getting knocked off line four or five times per hour…
truthbot, I see your location is “astride my arabian”. I’m usually to be found astride my Missouri Foxtrotter, though the two QH get used a little.
We have two fierce, dangerous Chihuahuas to guard things. The big dog just lays in the yard and sleeps until time to trail ride. He does love him some horse rides.