Wouldn’t do it, wouldn’t recommend it. The one time you need 9-1-1, (with either VoIP or cellular) there is little to no guarantee that your local PSAP (public safety answeing point) will be able to locate you. Phase II wireless isn’t what everyone wants it to be or thinks it is, and VoIP 9-1-1 is a complete mess.
It’s a bad idea not to have a land-line if you spend any length of time in your home. Really bad idea.
I went cell-only for years. Everything was fine. I put the land line back in once I started working from a home office though.
I did, and saved a ton of money.
–Saved about $45 a month on the land line costs.
–Saved at least $20 or more on long-distance charges since I can talk to my boyfriend from VA to CA for free (we have the same plan) and my parents and friends back home just for my regular cell phone charges.
The only problem was in my old house, I didn’t get a good reception. But where I live now, it’s not a problem.
If you want to save money (like $50-100 a month) then it’s a great idea.
Oh one more benefit. I live in CA now, but kept my VA area code, so all my family and friends in VA can call me and it’s not long distance, so it saves them money. Also, my company is in VA too, so it’s free when they call me too.
I haven’t dumped my land-line, but only because I’m job-searching and want employers to have multiple ways to contact me.
I dumped the land line many months ago. I mostly use a Vonage phone, plus a prepaid cell phone (Tracfone) for emergencies. This combination is perfectly adequate for my needs. The only annoyance is that the Vonage account has a different area code than most people in the city. So I have to dial the area code even for “local” calls, and I keep having to explain why I have an outside area code.
I love Vonage’s voice system - I get e-mail notification, and I can listen to the message on the web.
I’ve had a cell provided and paid for by my employer for about 4 or 5 years. When I moved into the house I live in 2 years ago, I never even turned on the land line, as I can get cable internet as part of a package for $25/month. At my old house I only really had a phone line for DSL. It gives me huge amounts of personal satisfaction to perpetually tell BellSouth to kiss my ass.
We dumped it for a while (almost a year) but have it back again now. We can get super basic land line hook up cheap, but we had to ask specifically for basic service with no features. We only pay like $12.99 a month for basic service and that to me is worth having the reliability of a land line. I prefer to only give my cell number out to family and friends. Also as others have pointed out, even with good cell coverage it is still not as clean sounding as a land line.
If it was only me I would maybe just have my cell phone, but with family I like the one number option of the land line. When friends call for my kid I don’t want to have to answer my cell phone every time, plus half the time it is buried in my purse and I can’t get to it before it goes to voice mail anyway :). When we just had the cell phones I had trouble leaving the baby with a sitter if she didn’t have a cell phone - how was she supposed to call me? I had to get my husband to leave his cell phone for her which was a pain and sometimes we would be out and realize halfway through dinner that we had left grandma and baby home alone with no phone. And the 911 factor weighs on my mind. So we got a landline again.
By law, any phone plugged into the network must be able to call 911, even if there is no service to that address.
We did about six months ago. For a long time we had a cell for travelling and making long distance calls, and a no-long-distance service landline for other stuff. Plus, we had DSL so had to have the package with the basic phone service.
But then, Qwest’s service kept getting worse and worse, and eventually our landline would go out for days at a time and we’d have no phone at all. The problem is in the box outside, which–while they installed it, we had to pay to maintain their malfunctioning piece of equipment.
So, we said fuck 'em, ditched the landline and DSL, got cable internet, and two cell phones. It’s a hair more expensive, but the internet is faster, and we never have to worry about Qwest’s stupidass box again.
I imagine it might be less convenient if we had kids or other folks in the house, but for us it works out nicely.
I did it.
The only thing is that I miss the ability to find my cell phone by calling it from my land line phone.
We haven’t had landline service for over 4 years. We had so many problems with GTE (now Verizon) at the old house that we eventually cancelled the service. When we moved into this house in aught-4, we never activated the landline. We just got tired of paying for landline service that never worked.
The 3 of us are on a family plan with 800 minutes, unlimited mobile-to-mobile, and unlimited text / multimedia messaging. Since almost all of our friends use the same carrier, we don’t pay to call them either, and we have great reception everywhere.
BTW, the conversation I had with the GTE rep when I told her to cancel the service was fun. She seemed utterly confused by someone wanting to not have a phone.
You sure about that? We used to have three lines in our house. Now we have only one. Does this mean that even though there is no dialtone on the other two, I could plug in my phone and dial 911 and have the cops come? Not that I ever tried it, but I am skeptical since there is no dialtone on those lines. Got some more info on this?
If you have a broadband connection, I can highly recommend that you use Skype. The reason I have a landline is for long distance calls. Setting up Skype just killed that reason altogether.
I have with no regrets. The landline was about $55 and the only time I ever seemed to use it was to call my cell phone when I’d misplaced it. My family is all long distance and it’s a lot cheaper to call them on the Cell Phone (I have Cingular and I’ve accumulated thousands of rollover minutes so it’s not a real issue during the daytime). I keep a pre-paid AT&T card for whenever I have to use an office phone or payphone for personal long distance, but usually I just cell it.
You may want to re-visit that. I think the FCC has reccently having little chats with the big Telcos about this.
Try Search; we’ve had half a dozen threads on this topic in the last year that I’ve noticed.
What law are you referring to? The FCC Mandate to the VoIP companies? If not, I’d like a cite, because the FCC has been granting extensions to VoIP companies on this ‘law’.
Facts are that the 9-1-1 service you get from a VoIP phone does not, with anywhere NEAR the same rate of accuracy as a wireline, denote your location to the people sending you help. That means your location may be a mystery to the people coming to put out your burning house, or catch the guy kicking in your door.
Same could be said of cellular, although many providers and PSAPS are doing their best, Phase II 9-1-1 (which is the standard that allows your location to be tracked to within 300 meters) isn’t available everywhere yet.
I may have misunderstood Asterion but in any case, he’s wrong. Perhaps in his area they mandate that, if your line is shut off for non-payment, you still h ave access to 9-1-1 services for a time, but federally, there is no law mandating that. If you shut off your land line phone, your number is given away and your circut turned off. It just doesn’t work that way.
Now, cell phones that are shut off, CAN dial 9-1-1, and take priority over regular calls on the cellular network, even if the service is shut off for non-payment, or customer request.
Take my word for it, if you cut off your landline service, you MAY (and are in fact likely to) lose enhanced 9-1-1 service.
Would if I could. Unfortunately, despite living in one of the more prosperous areas of the country, my cell phone gets no signal.