<p>The $16/month (on a $5.50 plan) is the bare-bones basic plan from Verizon. There is no long-distance service in dialing out and it isn’t a package with DSL though we do have DSL on the line. I have the feeling that Verizon does not like to sell this plan and they certainly don’t advertise it.</p>
<p>Wow!! Our landlines are like $70 a month once you add in all the ridiculous taxes, junk fees, etc. As I said earlier,we could bundle, but Comcast’s landline phone service stinks, adn AT&T dowent yet have the fiberoptic in our area which we are waiting for…We may look back into combining, as we have iternet/cable with Comcast and phone with AT&T. Anyone happy with AT&T internet and HDTV??</p>
<p>Jym626, have Verizon or AT&T given you an estimate as to when fiber optic service will be available in your area? Verizon does not provide its FIOS service to our neighborhood yet and I’m annoyed about that. It’s not like my home is in the mountains or not in a metropolitan area.</p>
<p>Our landline is AT&T. We pay about $18/month total, including taxes, for their bare-bones cheapest plan. Any calls that I make add to the bill, so I don’t make any, except for toll-free. I have found that a cheap answering machine prevents the need for landline answering service/voice mail. And I don’t need caller ID either, so I don’t have that extra fee. I make all long-distance calls on my cell phone.</p>
<p>jym, I didn’t think that comcast had landline phone service. I thought that, around here at least, their phones are internet-based. I could be wrong.</p>
<p>LW,
We haven’t checked into fiberoptic lately, but we are in a major metropolitan area, so it is ridiculous that AT&T isnt offering it. I do recall way back when we had DSL, there were “waiting lists” for people who wanted to switch the service providers. Dont want to find myself in that problem m as we need our internet. We have a pretty fast connection with Comcast, but our discounted deals just expired, so it’ll be time to reinvestigate this…</p>
<p>hmmm, gladmom- you might be right-- I just know that people who switched from AT&T to comcast for their phone service have been unhappy. I also do NOT use either the AT&T or Comcast email addreses as my email address, as you lose that if you change ISPs. Bummer.</p>
<p>Our landline is with Qwest, the most basic one we could get, no call dispaly, no long distance, etc. It comes to about $23/month, all the stupid taxes included.</p>
<p>The most basic cable with the fastest internet offered in our area is about $62/month. It is with Comcast.</p>
<p>I also looked into getting a cheaper landline deal for my dad-- he has verizon. The cheapest deal without losing the call waiting and caller ID (the aids yak on the phone a lot and I want them to know when I am trying to get through-- I dont was a busy signal) was about $44/month before junk fees, a whopping $7/mo less that what he had (but I took it). Their barebones deal cost was only about $5 less/mo. Didnt make sense to me to do that.</p>
<p>I’m not surprised that people don’t like internet-based phone service compared to landlines, for all the reasons previously posted. </p>
<p>I am happy with Comcast for our high speed internet and TV cable, but wouldn’t use the phone service unless THEY paid ME pretty well for using it.</p>
<p>Haven’t had a landline phone in years and am happy to be with one less bill each month. I guess we’re lucky to have good cell coverage and that phone works just fine. On the occasion where I need to make an international call, I’ll use Skype. </p>
<p>If one has decent cell coverage then the only reason to bother spending money on a landline is if you have a fax or for ‘power outage’ situations. However, these day’s I vastly prefer scanned PDFs via e-mail to faxes (that way I have an electronic archive record) and the whole ‘power outage’ situation is never really an issue. If the power outage is small-time then the cell phones almost always still work… and if it’s a major power outage (eg an ice storm) then the phone lies are out too so I don’t really see this as a big advantage anymore.</p>
<p>I still keep an old phone working with the landline when there is no power to the house. I wonder any new phone models that can do this.</p>
<p>I just happened to have paid the bill tonight-- base fee for the 2 lines with a bunch of features (most of which I dont use) is around $50 for the 2 lines. But there are about $24 worth of junk fees on there as well (some are doubled b/c we hae 2 lines). Sothe base fees arent outrageous-- its all the extra junk that is.</p>