Do you still have a home phone?

Originally Posted by tierre0

Yes I still have a landline and to be honest I have a lot better savings program for it then I do my cell. The cell I could live without though.

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I use my cell for emergencies. Although it would be nice to get rid of the telemarketers.

No landline. BF and I both have our cell phones.

We do have Verizon DSL though, and a year or so ago BF called them for something, and the CSR told him they could cancel our phone line and change it to a dry loop data line which is much cheaper than having to pay for phone service if the line only used for the DSL. Nice! Wish they would actually advertise that sort of thing.. but I guess that would be soo much in the way of actual service...

We keep our landline mostly because we have DSL. Our ISP is also our LD supplier, and we get much better rates than we used to with the basic supplier. Too bad they annoyed Rob.

Our cells are mostly for emergencies, and staying in touch when we're not near a landline. If we ever don't need the landline, we won't have any difficulty adjusting our lifestyle to include carrying our cells, because we mostly do anyway, just so that we don't forget them when we need them. But the cell rates for LD will have to come down a lot before that happens. We only use LD on the cells when we don't have a choice, and it can be brutal.

Originally Posted by aswient

I also have a landline but I have a good deal from my cable company, If I get the 3 package deal (internet, phone and cable) it comes out much cheaper for me.

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Same here, but satellite, phone and dsl.... It is also much cheaper for my family to call me on the land line from Brasil than to call my cell phone.

I rarely ever answer my cell phone when I'm at home and it's usually in my purse or in my car...I have a lot of friends who get annoyed at me for not answering it but a cell phone is just too much to keep up with lol. I always have it on me when I'm out somewhere for my own safety or in case someone needs to call me then. It's nice and liberating to not have to always have to be accounted for and have everyone close to you know your exact location and what you're doing. Unfortunately that isn't an option anymore and there is no way it ever will be an option...But I still feel safer having a landline, I feel like at an emergency it is much more likely to catch my attention. I may get 10-30 calls every day from people close to me asking what i'm doing and where I am and when I will be where they want me, so receiving a call on my cell phone becomes so trivial that I don't put as much weight on it and it's not a top priority for me to answer my cell phone. If the home phone is ringing though it always catches my attention and I'm thinking it could be the police or hospital, etc.

I actually never had a landline turned on/connected in my flat now. And I've lived here for somewhere around 2+ years and I've managed fine with my cell. And I've had a cell phone since my freshman year in high school, so that's like 6 or so years. My parents still have a home phone, plus their cellphones. I'm starting to see that there is little need for home phones, if you have cellphones.

No home phone. I think we were ahead of our time. It has become more 'normal' than a couple of years ago when we started not having one. Back then we would get double takes, and people would ask 'you don't have a phone'? We had a couple of situations where it was just about required to have one.

Yes, because we live in a rural area and our cell phones don't always have reception or it's a crappy connection.

It's good to see that the majority of posters here still have a land line. You should never get rid of a land line, not just yet. Main reason?? Cell phones are useless in an emergency, especially if you have children. Why?? Kids are taught to call 911 (in the usa) in an emergency and unless you can tell the dispatcher where you are, there will be a HUGE delay in sending help. With a land line, you can call 911, set the phone down and the police, ems and fire will know exactly where you are. Now, with the department I work, we do have a mapping system for cell phones. It is good, but not great. It still does not come close to using a land line. I am sure in a few years, this will become even better, but until it does, it's still best to have a land line should a emergency take place in your home. Take it from me, a 911, police, fire, ems dispatcher. When people have an emergency, it is hard for them to tell you where they are. And as we say, seconds save lives.

Originally Posted by AmberThe Bobcat

It's good to see that ther majority of posters here still have a land line. You should never get rid of a land line, not just yet. Main reason?? Cell phones are useless in an emergency, especially if you have children. Why?? Kids are taught to call 911 (in the usa) in an emergency and unless you can tell the dispatcher where you are, there will be a HUGE delay in sending help. With a land line, you can call 911, set the phone down and the police, ems and fire will know exactly where you are. Now, with the department I work, we do have a mapping system for cell phones. It is good, but not great. It still does not come close to using a land line. I am sure in a few years, this will become even better, but until it does, it's still best to have a land line should a emergency take place in your home. Take it from me, a 911, police, fire, ems dispatcher. When people have an emergency, it is hard for them to tell you where they are. And as we say, seconds save lives.

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Very good point John. For us, in Canada at least, to use a cell phone for all our calls would be far too expensive, plus there are many areas that have no service, depending on which carrier you use.

Good Point!! That is why I will not get rid of my landline. Plus I'm still on dial up internet so it has to stay.

I think keeping a landline esp when one lives in a rural area is a must.

Yep - we still have a landline, same reasons everyone else is saying: would be way too expensive to do the calling we do on a cell phone. I regularly make 1 hr + calls to Ontario, and lots of other shorter ones/calls to other places that would jack up my cell phone bill to an amount I dont want to consider. Plus, I like being able to choose which numbers to give to people: there are people I dont want to think they can reach me at anytime!

I have a home phone. I also have a cell phone. However, I don't give my cell phone number out and I only use it for making calls when I'm out. After I make my call I turn the phone off. If anyone needs to get hold of me they can call my home and leave a message on my answering machine and I'll call them back at some point. I don't even phone home to check for messages. I wait until I get home to check them.

we still have one but might disconnect it as we dont use it much.

Originally Posted by Persi & Alley

Mine was finally disconnected yesterday. Everybody else that I knew had long ago got rid of their home phones as being as useless as lighthouses. My BILs and SILs kept asking me "you both have your own private cellphones, you don't use the housephone anymore as a dialup for your computer, so why do you insist on paying for something that has no use?" They finally convinced me. I was the last to go.

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We have the minimum minute package because the whole extended family has the same service and the sisters and brothers and aunts, etc. can chat all day for no additional charge. That is why it does make sense for us. Included in the package is unlimited internet time which I am using right now. When my desktop computer finally breaks I will not replace it I am so used to doing it on my phone now. More than that, this phone with 16gb of music space replaces my old ipod and the organanizer replaces my palm pilot not to mention a phone that finally can take good photos and movies. I will ask this question again in 3 years. I imagine the response will be quite different.

Call me old fashioned, but I still chat on my land line about 8 hours a week. DH and I do a lot of speaker phone calls to our friends, and it just isn't the same as what you can get over a cell phone. I use my cell phone for work, so frankly don't want to see the thing when I get home. It goes in my purse turned off at night.

Besides, I happen to work for the phone company that provides service to my home, so I get the employee discount for a bundled package of land line, internet, long distance and wireless.

Originally Posted by Persi & Alley

I will ask this question again in 3 years. I imagine the response will be quite different.

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I want to see it!...