Do you still have a "land" telephone line?

[smfcpacfp]

I have both. It would be extremely rare for a land line to drop a call. Cell phone reception isn't great at m house in any event.

 

[Ken45101]

We dropped our landline service about 8 years ago. Call quality was so bad that too often you could not carry on a conversation. AT&T's attitude is "so what?" I've given them a courtesy call to let them know that there was a tree down on their line that had the main line down in the creek water. Their response was "that's not our responsibility". When they fix the main line, they wrap in in a trash bag (literally!)

When you call 911 around here and they ask "where is your emergency?" they don't mean "what street?", they mean "what state?" Our cell towers are all across the river in Kentucky and they have to transfer the calls to Ohio.

As for someone showing up to check on a 911 call without a person on the line, I doubt that will happen here. We have such non existent police coverage that I doubt they even bother.

 

[Bird]

Yep, we still have a land line, both for high speed DSL and for my wife to talk to you sister in another state every day. I couldn't afford the cell phone cost of that. I have an AT&T Go Phone that costs me about $9 a month (including tax) and use it so seldom that my account balance just keeps growing. But our daughters, sons-in-law, and grandson all have a T-Mobile family plan and one of the daughters put my wife on that, so I have no idea what she pays for it, but I said something to her recently about the number of minutes they use and she said they're on an unlimited plan.:confused3:

 

[RalphVa]

Rarely use our cell phones. They're for emergency and for staying in contact when one or both of us are out. Use land phone line for DSL for internet and e-mail. Could get these last 2 from Comcast with out TV but probably for a lot more money.

 

[Grumpy Old Man]

We still have a land line a couple of smart phones (for the gps and weather ) and 2 old school basic cell phones for the trucks .I rarely carry a phone with me unless I'm running a machine or out on the property alone it usally gets left in the truck and I check it once or twice a day , I just have no need to be digitally connected 24/7

 

[daveshoot]

All cell and internet all the time, for at least 7-8 years now. My cell is used much more for email than for talking but works well for both. Internet is microwave with static IP. We have Dish for TV and I can use our broadband for Netflix, etc. I don't pay per view anyway, since I am already paying a considerable sum for the Dish service, but I could do it via the broadband if I wanted.

I like communicating in little 1's and zeroes over radio waves. I don't know if cell tower generators will run out of diesel before mine runs out of propane, but an outage lasting that long would portend a pretty serious Emergency after which phone service might be the least of problems.

On the security front, it is much easier to disable a landline than wireless, although both can be managed, I'm sure. I just didn't find the 911 argument compelling at the cost. If you are using cable or VoIP for your "land line" you are already internet-dependent, and not on a true land line in the traditional sense.

Of all the arrogant, unresponsive vendors in my life, ATT was the worst, in all their forms.

 

[Bird]

Of all the arrogant, unresponsive vendors in my life, ATT was the worst, in all their forms.

And in my experience in Texas, they've always been the best, in all their forms. I'm sure it depends to a great extent on the individual employees and/or their supervisors.

 

[Larry Caldwell]

No cell service at my house at all. Very spotty cell service at my mother's house. If you hold your mouth right you might get one bar. We're pretty rural, so there is neither cell service or cable service in our areas. The phone company is the only game outside of town.

 

[JerryK]

Cells works great up here in Northern Michigan on the old Alltel net that Verizon took over. But call quality, dependablity, are markably better on my landline... plus the music sounds even more terrible on a cell whilst you are on hold....

 

[Housten]

We just took off our landline phone service. But, we still use the landline for DSL. The cost for the landline phone kept creeping up a little bit every month till I could stand it no longer. We now use cell phones and VOIP.

Housten