<p>about 2 years ago we went to cell only. my mother had a near panic attack ‘the sky is falling’ iphone has great reception and the speaker phone is really nice. charge it at night or in the car if traveling. it was costing $45 per month for basic service on the land line (unlisted) and we rarely used it. cell works well. only draw back was i could not fax but learned to scan well. not looking back.</p>
<p>we dropped our land line. no one would answer it. everyone had their own phone and knew the call was not for them. the only thing any of us missed about the land line was hunting our cell phones when we misplaced them .LOL</p>
<p>“On top of that I don’t see what’s so terribly urgent about having a phone that never goes out for most people. How do you cover yourself when you’re not tethered to your home line? Things can happen then as well.”</p>
<p>Spoken like a Californian! Blizzards or other things that disrupt power lines for days. It happens.</p>
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<p>That is why I use Ooma premium service, they will ring both your home line and your cell phon the same time when a call comes in, you can pickup either phone anywhere you go, including international, if you want to pay for the roaming. The premium service is around $100/YEAR, the regular service is perhaps $4/MO.</p>
<p>^^ Hey (pizzagirl) - California has blizzards - in the Sierra mountains. But admittedly, San Diego doesn’t even have snow or even severe storms. I’ve lived in places that have had power knocked out for days due to blizzards (Colorado) but even that wouldn’t convince me to get a land line unless I had a chronic health condition and needed the extra insurance.</p>
<p>Instead of blizzards we have a guy in Arizona who can knock power out for an extended period of time.
(Okay - I don’t really think it was all his fault, if at all - it was the fault of the power companies who have some power management issues to fix)</p>
<p>But I do have a question for you in storm country who have had power knocked out for days. How has the cell phone service worked out throughout the power outage? Do they have backup power at an adequate number of the cell sites or does it all just go down for the duration of the power outage?</p>
<p>Electricity has gone out, but not cell phone service (of course, you can’t recharge your cell unless you run it off a car).</p>
<p>The thing that stops us now from getting rid of the landline completely is that H is an ob-gyn and obviously needs to always be reachable / reach out, 24/7/365.</p>
<p>^I would say that’s a good reason, PizzaGirl. Though at our hospital, most of the physicians have done away with beepers and simply use their hospital issued cell phones.</p>
<p>I always wondered if your H is an ob-gyn, would he or could he deliver his wife’s babies. If he couldn’t be the doctor then he probably could be a real pain in the neck father.</p>
<p>“But I do have a question for you in storm country who have had power knocked out for days. How has the cell phone service worked out throughout the power outage?”
It was very spotty - even for providers in the area who are usually very good </p>
<p>“Do they have backup power at an adequate number of the cell sites”
My guess is no and that it may be dependent on how populated the area you are in is. We’ve been blocked into our road by trees down with no power and spotty cell service, but the land lines were fine. We weren’t a priority because only a handful of homes were effected.</p>
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<p>Generally speaking, it would be considered both unethical / unwise for an ob-gyn to deliver his wife’s babies (absent an emergency situation, of course).</p>
<p>I do use our fax-printer-scanner-copier, all in one quite a bit.
So giving up a land line means sending no faxes & I seem to send them at least once a week… so can’t consider it for now, but would like to!</p>
<p>Do people still send fax? I usually scan and email now.</p>
<p>Oldfort - on the rare times that I need to send or receive a fax, I use either my work fax or my H’s work fax. It just seems so '00’s!</p>
<p>DH is required to have a land line in case of emergency. He is on the short list for emergency cell coverage and even that collapsed in DC with the earthquake.</p>
<p>Personally, it’s $41/mo. I’d be glad to save!</p>
<p>^^ If he’s required to have a land line for his job why doesn’t his employer pay for it?</p>
<p>anyone know about or use that magicjack thing…infomercial on today that says now you can keep your old number and you can use it without the computer? (magicjack plus) </p>
<p>if you keep your old number…what happens when you call at&t and say cancel landline…couldnt they recycle your number and cause a problem</p>
<p>from what i can tell, the magicjack plus plugs into a wall outlet so if you lose power you would lose phone?</p>
<p>ucla_dad,
They already pay for his Blackberry w/data plan (and provide an int’l cell for his frequent overseas travel). Because the landline is only needed in emergencies, and we do still use it, it does not seem appropriate to ask them to pay for that, too.</p>
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<p>I believe and maybe wrong, that magicjack require your computer turned on all the time as it is a USB application. I don’t want my computer on all the time in order to receive calls.</p>
<p>Regarding the “porting” or to transfer your att phone numbers to a voip provider. I have done these 3 times already. You do not need to tell att that you are porting, but after you have confirmed it is done (like you’ve check the magicjeack it is ring the correct number) you must call att to cancle your subscription/account.</p>
<p>We have power outages but they often last 24 hours or less. The landline that doesn’t require power still generally stays up & running but we are urged by authorities to limit it to emergency/urgent calls only so that they don’t get overwhelmed. Cell phones generally have also worked during our outages and we haven’t had them run out of battery. If we had longer outages, would consider getting a generator. My dad was given a generator by my brother. It’s still in its original box and no one has any plans of unpacking it. Dad hasn’t even bought gas or anything to fuel it. Don’t understand my brother sometimes.</p>
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<p>I would say that is the case in most medical fields. For one thing, I’m pretty sure it’s illegal to charge insurance for services provided by somebody in the family like that…</p>