Posted on 06/19/2009 11:19:06 AM PDT by JoeProBono
The concept of a home phone may soon be going the way of the corner pay phone.
Government research shows that more and more households are getting rid of their land line. And for the first time, cell-phone-only homes outnumber those with just land lines.
Kelly Fitzsimmons did not give up her phone without a fight. The instrument of gossip and grand plans, and the bearer of bad news and good, the land line to her was a lifeline.
"I just had in my head you gotta have a land line. You gotta have a land line," she says. "That's the phone to your home, not to me, Kelly, or my husband, John, or the kids individually, but to the family. It's home base."
But last fall, with the down economy forcing hard decisions, Fitzsimmons was finally persuaded.
The telephone and answering machine have been cleared from their perch on the kitchen counter, the phone jack above it vacant.
"It's a beautiful thing," she says
RE: “Taht’s OK. I will keep my landline phone as long as it’s available.
Why would anyone want to pay a bill for multiple cell phones over a landline phone for the family is beyond me.”
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Agree — I will be the last person with a landline if that’s what it takes. I DETEST the blasted cellphones and though I have one, I only use it on very rare occasion re vehicle breakdown.
I LOVE my landline!
One nice thing about a land line is that you can’t misplace it. Another is that you can’t drop it inter the terlit. Uh...a friend told me about that...
Now if I could only get my parents to embrace the cell phone. They have cells but they turn them off when they are home, forget to turn them back on when they leave and while they're at home with their cells turned off, they have no call waiting on their home phones. I guess they're just set in their ways.
Haven’t dumped the land line, but we’ve changed to the cheapest available plan.
We make our long distance calls by cell phone on the weekends (when they’re free)
We (the wife and I) each have a cell, and we HAD a home land line (unpublished for more than a decade).
We dropped the land line and added a new cell line with the same number for not much additional extra to our existing cell bill.
Now, for the important part: The hew (home) cell line is connected to an Xlink Cell Bt Gateway. The gateway connects to the cell via Bluetooth, then our home phone is plugged into the XLink and our existing cordless phones (one on each of three levels) work just as before. And we are saving money.
It's a great system.
We dropped our land line about four years ago.
Maybe my cellular phone is just not too good. The quality of the sound on the cellular phone is just not the same as on a land line phone. When people call up from a cell phone, you can tell they are on a cell phone and not a land line. And the fuzzy scratchy signal and dropped calls just don’t happen with land lines. If cell phones get better in quality I would consider just having the cell phone.
And phone polls will continue to sample a poor slice of contemporary citizens.
$30 in phone company “taxes” and FCC fees (thank you Al Gore) killed the land line.
We will keep our land line here in Northern Virginia.
When the last hurricane came through all the cell phones were out for about a week while the hard line phone never quit working.
I also make sure we have one regular, hard wired phone so that when the cordless ones go out with the power we still have communications capability.
Progress: you used to pay 12 bucks a month telephone bill for the entire for the family, now you’re paying, what, $200?
Progress: the quality was such that you could hear a pin dropped on the other end, now every other word is unintelligible.
after having landlines (Verizon)with all the bells & whistles, cell phones, etc... I have finally settled on what works for me.
I have a landline stripped down service, just like the old days , no call waiting, no caller id, etc.... If I make an out of state call I’m billed but there’s no extra charge for that service just the out of state calls you make for a nominal fee. The landline costs $10.00- out of state calls are like 12cents a min... yeah, that might be high but i don’t make many.
Now , if i could only get my hands on a pushbutton desktop curly cord model phone circa 1970-1980. It has a beautiful ring tone.
I’m with you, except that I don’t have a cell phone. When I am out of touch I want to be out of touch.
My cell phone doesn’t work. There’s no dial tone.
Are you logged in?
3 years without land line for me. Never miss it. I am not a big phone person anyway. my cell does everything & more than my “home phone did”
regarding bygone days..
I am such a techie dinosaur anyway. My cell phone is just for phones even though I have a blackberry.. I do text now & then but am slow & inefficient with it. So much easier to click/call.I love the neat things available now but just dont have most things due to economic constraints. My brother provides my cell phone on his family plan. So in Ohio I have a Oklahoma number ! and feel a bit constrained to not abuse the shared minutes.
I use my computer /email/etc for most communication.. like 90%
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