We were paying the phone bills the other day and got to thinking.
We pay $47 a month for the regular land-line.
We pay $60 a month for 500 minutes for a family plan with two cell phones, one for me and one for my daughter. We usually use about 200 minutes on that plan, so we’d have 300 minutes to play with for home use.
If we dumped the regular phone, we’d be saving about $50 a month. For $10 more, we could get 700 minutes on the cell plan. We’re happy with our cell plan, too, coverage-wise.
My husband has a cell phone through his employer, so that’s not really a consideration - his phone is covered.
It does seem rather redundant to have all these phones sitting around. We’re not big ‘phone people,’ either. None of us (not even my teen-age daughter) call people up just to chat for hours on end.
So, have you done it? Any major problems? Funny stories? Has it worked so far?
It works great for me, but I live alone. It might be more difficult if you’ve got non-cellphoned people living in the house. I’ve had nothing but my cellphone and cable broadband for the past four years or so.
The only disadvantage is I don’t have a backup when I need to replace the phone (if it breaks) or if the power goes out and I can’t recharge it (as happened during the big blackout a couple years ago.)
That’s what I did. I was paying about $50 a month for my landline, but I got a really good deal on a cell phone through my employer which was about $30. So no more landline.
Now my company pays for my cell phone, so it’s completely free.
I dumped mine last May as I got almost no calls on it except for telemarketers. I finally put a message on it saying to call my cell phone I you wanted to get in contact with me and thn dumped it a few months later. For familes they might make sense but for single people landlines are getting kind of redundant and at $40-$50 per month are expendable.
The only problem I run into is sometimes I misplace my cell phone and have to use my Denali’s Onstar satellite phone service to get it to ring and find it, but I had that problem even when I had the landline.
We dumped our landline about 3 years ago. Interestingly enough, we were able to keep our DSL without the landline. We only recently (about 2 months ago) dropped the DSL for cable because my husband wasn’t happy with the connection speed.
We don’t miss the landline at all. No need for it, since we’ve all got cell phones. It was a wasted $20/month or so. The only people that called that number were telemarketers.
No problems, no regrets, no funny stories other than my sisters joking with me since we also don’t have cable TV.
Wow, you guys are fast.
Thanks for all the replies.
astro, we are a family, but three of us have cell phones (my son is only nine), so it just seems stupid to keep laying out nearly $50 a month for that extra line.
My son’s calls consist of, "Hey, can you play?
“Yeah, I’ll see you outside.”
It’d be easy enough to just let him use my cell for that stuff.
We have a landline, but we don’t have long-distance service on it. It only costs us about $25 a month. That way friends and family can still reach us on the home phone. We use our cell phones for all our long-distance calls. This works really well for us.
My parents just dumped their landline for a cell with the same number. Now, Mom, Dad and I all have phones on the same plan, plus the main “house” number, while my brother and his girlfriend share another plan. It’s kind of a pain for my mom, who’s in her late 50s and nontechnical, because she prefers having a “real” phone. They are, however, saving scads of money.
I’d like to dump the land line but cell phone service where I live is crap. I have to go outside to use it, That’s not something I want to do when it’s cold or in severe weather. It’s the price I pay to live in the country, I guess.
I don’t worry about power outages at home-- I have a charger for my cell phone that I can use in the car. I charge it on the drive to work, then use it to call my parents once I’m there-- or stop at Wal-Mart and yak while walking around in the store. (I used to swear I’d never do that, but now it’s so nice to catch up with them while being able to do something else!)
If it weren’t for the security gate at work that has to call my phone if someone else needs to get in, I’d drop the land line. (And sure, normally I could just give them the cell number, except that it’s on my parents’ plan and thus it’s in a long distance area code.)
Me, about three years ago. There’s calling cards for international calls that can be used with cell phones…for a while that was the only reason I kept my landline; to talk to family overseas. I love not having a house phone and don’t see any benefit to it (in my case.)
I’ve still got a landline, but only because my DSL service requires it to stay in service. Phone+DSL is still cheaper than cable internet where I’m at, so that’s what I got. But all I use is my cell phone. After a few months of only getting telemarketer calls, I unplugged my only wired phone. So I pay for the service, but I don’t even know what my home phone number is anymore.
I did it because I didn’t understand why getting a land line in a Los Angeles apartment was ridiculously complex.
Apparently they just turn on a jack SOMEWHERE in the building and it is up to your land lord to get a technician to come out and rewire it to your apartment. I had the poor phone company rep explain it over and over and it still made no sense. He of course thought I was crazy. I explained to him that in Seattle (where I had just moved from) you call the phone company tell them your address and apartment number and they turn on the jack in the apartment.
I wasn’t going to trouble my poor old polish land lady with this…so cellphone only for me.
I use mainly just my cell phone. We do have a landline, but that’s because Mom is completely non-technical. It took her awhile just to learn how to use the cordless phone.
My brother just uses a cell phone, but he travels between three cities for work and a landline just wouldn’t cut it to keep in contact with anyone.
We ditched the land line, but we’re thinking of getting it back. Mostly because I never remember to turn my ringer back on after work. :: embarassed ::
