I haven’t had a landline in my home since I was like twelve. Life is great. Exactly as it would be with a landline except that when my phone rings I know it’s going to be for me and I never have to get up and walk across the room to answer the phone. It’s always in my pocket.
I guess I’m just astonished that no one else seems to notice the enormous difference in quality between land lines and mobiles. I find a fair amount of utility in hearing the first syllable of callers’ words, sensing the hesitation or promptness in their voice, and knowing when they’re finished talking. I’m convinced that the increased frustration of making cell phone calls is what has given rise to texting.
I have both a landline and a cell phone, like them both. Well, sort of. As much as one can like a phone.
As a late comer to owning a cell, I enjoy the peace of mind of having it in the car in case of being stranded with mechanical trouble (I live in the boonies) but I don’t prefer to talk on a cell phone. The reception is clear but the other person’s voice sounds mufflled - as if they’re speaking too close to the transmitter. I will often have to ask them to repeat for me to understand. This makes little sense since they are often talking to me from a cell phone.
Although I like the security of a the car cell phone, am just the opposite of the people who simply must have the phone with them at all times.
I generally don’t like the damn phone. The phone does not accompany me on bike rides and any phone has yet to see the cockpit of any kayak of mine. If anyone calls while doing these things, they can bloody well leave a message. I take inspiration from the song by Cake “No Phone”
No phone. No phone. I just want to be alone today. No phone. No phone. (Cake - No Phone)
Edited to Add - left the reply window open, did not see the post by Mr Downtown ~shakes hands with Mr Downtown~
I’ve been landline free since 2003. Anyone who lives in a city with decent cellphone coverage has no reason to have a landline phone anymore. The landline was costing $30 a month, and my actual cellphone bill is about that much. Of course, I spend more on a data and texting plans. The only people I know with landlines are my parents, but my mom lives way out in the country and they don’t get good service out there.
One thing to do when filling out forms is to leave the phone line area blank, and fill in the mobile number. This is especially important if you ever fill out anything for buying real estate. The banks sell your phone number to everyone they possibly can, but they can’t sell your mobile number, just your landline.
I’ve never experienced this, and I’m not sure what’s causing it. That’s a good reason to try out a phone before turning off your old number. Carrier quality varies from state to state. I call friends in the South and it sounds like they’re underwater, wheras Montana friends are crystal clear.
I only have landlines when they are required in order to get internet service. Right now I have the landline, strictly speaking - but there isn’t a phone connected to it. Anybody who may need to contact me has my cellphone and may email, neither of them has changed for the last 6-7 years (unlike my addresses and landlines). The landlines do have better quality, but having to update everybody’s contact info every time I move is just a huge pain in the ass. Also, I can switch the cellphone off when I go to bed, or to take a shower - if anybody happens to call me at those times, tough titty, they can leave a message or call again (too many times of running to a phone for which only my family had the number, and it was some telemarketer).
My alternate phone is Skype.
I got rid of my traditional landline a few months ago. I did have to pay $200 to install a cellular connection on the home alarm, plus an extra $8/month for that service, so it will take me 6 months before I get payback.
I also bought a magicJack because for $20/year it meant that we could use our existing phones with extensions in various parts of the house. That occasionally gives poor reception, so the quality is not as good as a regular landline.
We are cutting our landline off this month after agonizing about it for a couple years. Reason being that it is redundant, and low-hanging fruit in our 2011 budget cuts.
I got rid of my land line about 4 months ago. I don’t miss it a bit.
How does one call 911 on a cell phone? Does the call go to the right emergency center?
No issue there. 911 calls go to the closest dispatch center based on the cell towers you’re hitting.
Also, some phone carriers allow you to specify your 911 address so the dispatchers get it automatically (if it’s different than whatever address you have on file with them).
To join the chorus, I haven’t had a landline since 2002, and I haven’t had a single problem.
I usually write “no phone”. How often do you really have to give a phone number out? I don’t mind giving my throwaway hotmail address, or a made up number, but 99% of the time with business transactions I just say, “I’ll call you” And I have caller ID blocked.
In a real must give situation, I give my work number.
For example. The service department at my car dealership. I want them to call me to tell me my car is ready. They have my cell phone number, which is good, so they can reach me.
They have some sort of “customer satisfaction” quota they have to meet that involves some minimum-wager calling me to make sure I am orgasmically happy with my oil change. That woman has my landline number and she will not stop calling and leaving messages, which I delete. I’m not home when she calls, because I am employed, and I do not care to call her back. Of course I could call back once and demand that she never ever call me again, but this is just one example. And before you ask how she got my landline number, I bought the car 10 years ago, before I had a cell phone.
Dumped it in June, not going back. Went to a family plan and with the free minutes for calls to other cell phones and the nights and weekends we use less than a quarter of the minutes on our plan. Plus we get voicemail, conference calls, unlimited data, and all the other bells and whistles.
The only problem is having the kids talk to the grandparents. Our youngest can’t or won’t hold the phone up right and accidentally switches to other things on our android phones. Bluetooth headsets are even to big for her. Our solution is going to get a third line on the account for ten dollars a month and get a free basic old style flip phone the kids can hold. We will keep it in the house as an emerency phone, and could do a three way call using it. Still cheaper than a landline plus cellphones that we would need anyways.
I recently moved back into my condo in August, and now only have a cellphone, having canceled my land line when i moved out. Life with only a cellphone has gone pretty well. I’m more annoyed with my service provider, which is AT&T, than the actual cellphone itself.
It’s a IPhone 3G, which I love, but unfortunately, there is a disturbing tendency for service to simply drop calls, which is can be really inconvenient especially when you’re trying to conduct business like reordering your cable service!! It happened three times in one day. :mad:
All that will go away early next year when I jump ship and go to Verizon. 
Whenever my iPhone used to start dropping calls, without fail there was an update I hadn’t installed yet. Maybe it was coincidence, but check for an update. (My iPhone 4 doesn’t seem to have that problem.)
I did it a few months back, and have been very happy.
In addition to the cell phone, I also have Skype. I pay a bit extra for additional Skype services – I subscribe to the unlimited Skype calls to U.S. landlines, which is a few bucks a month, and another few bucks a month for an Online Number, which allows people to call me via Skype through any other phone. It works out very nicely. The Online Number rings through my computers, so as long as I’m connected to the internet (which I almost always am), it rings. And if I’m not – it automatically forwards to my cell phone after a few rings.
I would do the precise opposite - I hate cell phones, and I only have one because a) pay phones are an endangered species and b) I may have to pick up a sick kid from school. If I felt it were an option, I would ditch the cell phone in a second. Land line - never.
I wait to make phone calls from home, where I can hear clearly, rather than call out from the cell phone where ambient noise muddies an already distorted signal.
We cut off our landline altogether about a year ago and haven’t missed it at all. For the three years prior to that, we had a landline because we had internet and TV service hooked to it, but we turned the ringer off on the one actual phone that was connected to it and never gave anyone that number. When we switched to cable TV and internet, we killed the landline for good.
I just find that keeping my landline is cheaper, since it’s bundled with my Internet. Heck, my sister is the only person in the house with a cell phone plan, and she can only afford that because she’s splitting it with a friend. Mom and dad use prepaid phones. I have a prepaid phone around here somewhere that I got as a gift, but it’s going to go out in January.