How many still have a Landline in their home?

[downsizingnow48]

We have not had landline in any house for 15 years maybe more. After cell phones came in the only landline calls we got were from junk marketers.

At the Mendocino place the ground level cell signal is too weak to use, so I put a booster antenna on a 25 ft pole above the roof, aimed at the closest tower. That works fine.

 

[oosik]

Thirty eight plus years. Never had a land line. Started with a Motorola Bag Phone - now an Apple XR.

 

[2LaneCruzer]

We have a landline, and have had for over 50 years. It's a matter of not wanting to change, plus all of our friends, relatives and neighbors know our number has not changed in all that time and they can reach one or both of us at that number. We have extensions in every room, the garage and the shop...which makes it handy, because I never carry my cell phone unless I leave the house by my self. Yeah, it costs us an extra few bucks a month, but we like it. We even have one old style extension that is powered by the telephone line, so if we lose electricity, we still have one phone that will work.

 

[3Ts]

We added a land line a few years ago. We are in an area that has no usable cell coverage. We lived here for awhile before we could get any form of communications with the outside world, we had to go into town to use a cell phone. So, as soon as we met the criteria, we had a land line installed. All the circuits were already used so the phone company had to install a new trunk cable and to tunnel under a State highway which involved the state and getting approvals to do so. Lots of time and lots of money went into getting us a land line. However, we are seniors and we got the basic "health & safety" rate of $40 for the installation. I'm sure it was more like $4k to do all that they did. We have a basic rate, but by the time the taxes and fees are added it's 4 times that cost. Still, to talk to folks from our house, it's the only way. Sometimes the cell will connect here, but rarely. We now have a satellite link so the phone is connected to wifi, but the calls over it are poor, text messaging mostly works, and the land line still works much better. However, we do have a problem with the land line when major storms come thru and may take a few days for the land line to be fixed.

IF, we had reliable cell coverage and internet linkage, we'd consider dropping the land line. (The land line has it's own power source and will work when the towers don't)

 

[Tomtint]

We have a landline only for a designated fax line.

 

[fatjay]

I still have my landline phone. It costs nearly nothing to keep going. Any time we sign up to some membership service, like acme rewards, etc we use that number so a) no annoying spam texts on cell phones and b) we don't have to remember which of our cell phones we used to sign up when they tell us to put in our phone number at the register.

And i've had the number for ages. It's my number. It's part of the original local exchange that my parents had when I grew up. And you simply can't get them anymore.

 

[oosik]

Ha, ha. My cell phone. I turn it on when I want to make a phone call. I TRY to remember to turn it on in the evening. To see if I got any messages worth returning. For whatever reason - I can count the "junk calls/texts" I get annually on the cell phone on one hand.

 

[rekees4300]

We have a Frontier landline. It's $54/mo. and doesn't even include Call Forwarding. That feature would be another $9/mo. Get "No Dial Tone" almost everytime it rains. Takes Frontier up to a week to fix it. There was a 31 day period in 2019 that it was out for 27 days and had to be "fixed" 4 times by Frontier. No phone is a serious problem for 911, etc. so we got a wireless backup phone from Verizon. It's $23/mo, includes Call Forwarding and voice quality is better than Frontier's landline.

 

[lman]

We have a Frontier landline. It's $54/mo. and doesn't even include Call Forwarding. That feature would be another $9/mo. Get "No Dial Tone" almost everytime it rains. Takes Frontier up to a week to fix it. There was a 31 day period in 2019 that it was out for 27 days and had to be "fixed" 4 times by Frontier. No phone is a serious problem for 911, etc. so we got a wireless backup phone from Verizon. It's $23/mo, includes Call Forwarding and voice quality is better than Frontier's landline.

If you have cell service or internet service, why don't you drop your problematic landline phone service.

 

[rekees4300]

If you have cell service or internet service, why don't you drop your problematic landline phone service.

We've been seriously thinking about dropping the landline. Had it for 20 years, bad habits are hard to break.

 

[lman]

We've been seriously thinking about dropping the landline. Had it for 20 years, bad habits are hard to break.

I had mine for 40 years and decided that they stole enough of my money. You would think the competing cell phones would make their prices and fees more reasonable.

 

[Doofy]

Our Co-Op requires everyone to have a landline wether you want it or not. That doesn't sit well with me at all. No other decent choices for internet though.

 

[AWSubie]

All phone service in my area went to Voice Over Internet Protocol some years ago. It is interesting that many people I know beleive that they still have a traditional land line when in fact they have a VoIP phone.

 

[grsthegreat]

Also as a note.... in the 4-5 years before I stopped wiring new homes in my business, I only recall 1 home that wanted wired phone lines. Still did catv, but no phone wiring. Inspectors even stopped requiring the 1 phone jack requirement rule years ago. People just didn’t have landlines.

 

[ultrarunner]

My place built by retired Telco guy... Phones in every room including bathrooms, out buildings and garage... plus double the amount of jacks even out to where his brother would park the RV when visiting...

I've yet to turn on the phones and doubtful I ever will.

 

[Travelover]

No landline, but still have all the cordless phones bluetoothed to the cell phone. This allows me to answer the phone in any room or the garage regardless of where the cell phone is actually located.

 

[DieselnHooters]

I am going back to a land line next week, tried a cell but signall is so weak it cuts off in the midddle of a conversation or works only one way. Tried internet phone VOIP, works great 2 or 3 days out of 10, again most time works only one way, they hear me fine but it cuts 3 words out of five on my side. Was willing to try WIFI call over the cell phone but my provider informed me I would need to upgrade my cheap yearly package to a much more expensive monthly one so no thx.

 

[psvfd]

No landline, but still have all the cordless phones bluetoothed to the cell phone. This allows me to answer the phone in any room or the garage regardless of where the cell phone is actually located.

We bought the bluetooth to cell and used it for a few months,now just use the cells. Got rid of the wired phones and DSL. We do not use the internet much, but have a hotspot unlimited.

We had them port home number to my wife cell, had that number many years.

 

[MossRoad]

I hear a lot of comments about keeping landlines for answering machines.... cell phones have answering machine built in. It's called voice mail. You can play it over and over again, forward it to someone else, block the calls, screen the calls. Works great.

For those of you that like having phone extensions in your house, you can keep those with a cell phone. We dropped our landline and had the number ported to an old iPhone5 that remains on a charger 24/7. We kept our same phone number that everyone we know uses. No changes to them. We have 3 cordless phones in our house and a wired phone out in the detached garage. The cordless phone base station is bluetooth capable, and it is paired to the iPhone5.

When grandma calls the same number she's called for 35 years, it rings the iPhone5, that rings all of the cordless phones and the wired phone in the garage. We pick up a handset and start talking.

Conversely, if we want to make a call, we pick up any handset in the house and dial the number we choose. It calls out on the iPhone5 and people on the other end see it as our regular number. Again, nothing changes for us or them.

Towards the end of our landline usage, we had several problems with line degradation. They came out 2-3 times in the last 2 years, switched to a few different pairs of the old underground, ran new lines overhead after that failed, changed lines in a "box down the road" a couple times, etc... I'm glad to be done with it.

 

[MossRoad]

No landline, but still have all the cordless phones bluetoothed to the cell phone. This allows me to answer the phone in any room or the garage regardless of where the cell phone is actually located.

Same here. :thumbsup: