Posted on 12/17/2008 2:50:46 PM PST by dynachrome
Nearly one-fifth of all U-S homes (18%) have cut the land line connection and use only a cell phone for their communication. That is a big increase from the seven percent using only a cell phone in 2005. How about you - Do you plan to dump the land line? And when?
No - I'll stay with Alexander Graham Bell's wired version.
Yes - Within the next six months.
Yes - Within the next year.
Yes - But I'm not sure when.
Select your option and vote
(Excerpt) Read more at 910knew.com ...
My security system is connected to my landline.
I wanted to cut off the land phone, but a security connection is not always dependable through the cell phones, so I’ve been told.
Same here. We each have cells. Same with my daughter and her husband. More and more people are dumping the land line.
Without a doubt audio quality is superior on a land line today. This will change over time - not through the improvement of wireless technologies but through the degrading of the quality of landline voice service. This is will be done by using different codecs to compress voice calls, to about 1/8th the normal volume of data, before transmitting it over packet networks. Services like Skype and Vonage already do this.
Pocket PC on GSM using GPRS is best. You can take your SIM card out and put it in another phone if yours is broken, or if you want to buy another phone, or, if you’re like me, you have several phones. I take my Razr when we go out ‘cause it’s slim, and I take my Nokia when I work out in the yard or whatever, ‘cause it’s cheap.
That said, T-Mobile does have Blackberry’s, or you can buy them on the open market without having to serve a longer prison sentence.
While I’m at it, may I offer a plug for T-Mo? Thank you.
{Shameless promotion for T-Mobile follows...}
I’ve had a cell phone since 1988, and I’ve been through, oh, 8 or 10 (or more-LOL) providers since. I went with T-Mo in 2002, and haven’t looked back. They have, absolutely, the best, most world class, customer service there is. Bar none.
Every provider has “dead spots” in their system, every provider provides about the same features, plans and phones. But NO ONE has really great customer service, except T-Mo. And, trust me folks, they honor their long time customers with their loyalty, too.
As an added bonus, if you travel to Europe, all you need to do is call them and tell them you’re going to EU, and they open your phone to send and receive calls from there (that’s a one time activation-it never needs to be done again), there is NO CHARGE for doing that, and, you are billed in dollars and, since T-Mo is a European company, you get the same rate they charge there and no surcharges.
{End of shameless promotion}
I foresee landline phones going the way of newspapers.
As younger people age, they will reject the old technology in favor of the new.
Getting rid of my DSL in January. I hate my landline, I rarely use it because I work 2 jobs, and I get a bunch of telemarketing calls. And that ringing is annoying. Plus it's $30 a month and that's all fees, federal and state taxes, plus a "Line Maintenance Charge" from the phone company. I did a cost comparison and it was cheaper to switch to Road Runner and get a real cell phone instead of using Tracfone.
I would expect that by the time the landline companies choose to kill their cash cow by degrading voice calls, the technology for Internet telephony will become more reliable. That’s the only thing holding me back from switching to my cable company’s VOIP at this point in time.
Reliability is another big issue. Old local exchange carriers have infrastructure in place that lets them quickly and remotely test and resolve problems down to the port level.
About 6 years ago I did some work for a cable company that has since changed hands. They were thinking about rolling out a voice product and I wrote the RFP for their network equipment. As part of the process I asked them how they diagnosed outages on their network. One of their lead engineers explained the process to me.
He said they did it by telephone calls from customers. If they got a call from one person complaining their service is out they would wait 20 minutes and if nobody else had called, roll a truck to their nearest point of presence to the trouble and trouble shoot manually from there to the customer’s premises. If they got a lot of calls they plotted the addresses on a map and rolled a truck to the effected point of presence. So if you’ve ever wondered why you phone goes out a lot less often than your cable, now you know.
I just converted to Verizon FIOS TV pkg. I insisted would I would only do it if my copper Network Interface was kept as my phone source. They wanted to put it on fiber-optic. That would be subject to power outage with an 8 hour battery backup. We’ve had hurricanes that lost our power for days. No, big destruction like Florida, just trees knocking lines down.
The phone companies want to stop supporting landlines. While I was talking with the Verizon saleswoman, we got disconnected. When the saleswoman got back on the line, she tried to tell me that was an example of how unreliable the landlines copper wire was.
What a joke. She had clearly disconnected us for effect. When I wanted to get my husband to agree to the TV package, she managed to get him right on the line in a three-way call without going through the conference call numbers my husband has to do to talk to many people. She just connected BAMM.
Yesterday, I heard Rush mention that couple in Florida who just happen to be listening in on people's cell phones and recorded Newt talking with Bayner or someone. Then, they sent it to the Dems or the Times. I can't remember the exact the sequence. But, the transcript was published.
Rush was so funny in how he put it. It should be told to as a warning to one & all of what the Dummies will do to destroy people.
I was in a cell phone retail store yesterday, getting on a new carrier, new handsets, etc. While talking with the rep, I learned he’s still a big believer in having a land line at home, as a result of experience gained while wireless-only during a blizzard and multi-day power outage when he lived in Iowa some years back. “Wireless only” meant “no communications” at that time.
I concur with his reasoning. In natural disasters that kill the power grid, landlines work, or work first.
“mention that couple in Florida who just happen to be listening in on people’s cell phones”
A story from a few years back. I believe the couple was finally convicted of some misdemeanor. I think it is illegal in Florida to record without permission of all parties or you must have a warrant.
will be landline (and phone spam) free for 3 years next month. Our home security system is even set up through our cell phones.
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