<p>Got rid of the landline 3 years ago and have never looked back. My phone dials 911 as well as my landline did. </p>
<p>I have a Skype phone number for work calls out and receiving business calls from landlines. The bill for an entire year is about the same as one month of my landline. </p>
<p>I like the separation. If Skype rings, I know it’s work, I can see the number of the person calling, and can take it or let it go to voicemail.</p>
<p>I guess it comes down to what you pay for your landline, cell service, internet, etc.</p>
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<p>This is something that hasn’t completely caught up yet, but it’s coming. All of our cell phones have GPS enabled in them. When you call 911, your phone provides a signal that can be used to track it. The problem is that not all 911 call centers have the technology to use that GPS tracking. It’s coming…</p>
<p>We like having a landline & I use it to send faxes. I also use it when we are having lengthy calls, as we only have 700 combined minutes on our cell plan. We are also concerned about radiation, which I believe is less or eliminated with landlines vs. cell phones.</p>
<p>Our landline is about $25/month with all taxes & fees. Combined with the DSL, the phone + DSL is under $60/month.</p>
<p>We don’t have unlimited long distance on our landline, but buy inexpensive phone cards from Costco for long distance. Have been using the same $20 card for years now for our few long distance calls & faxes.</p>
<p>We have our “landline” bundled in with internet and cable TV, I’m not sure how much we would save per month if we dropped it, probably around $20/month.</p>
<p>We’ve had that number for 20+ years though, there are a lot of people that have that number that might not have our cell number(s). So we are keeping it for now.</p>
<p>Actually ours is bundled too, and I don’t know we’d save much by dropping it. I guessed the 29 cuz that’s a third of the bundle price.</p>
<p>And I"m with you on the radiation, Himom. It’s a concern. We also share only 700 min on the cell plan.</p>
<p>We keep our landline because it’s the only number any of our kids and their friends remember. Cell numbers are associated with a name and/or picture, so most don’t know the number. It also comes with our cable bundle.</p>
<p>DH needs to be reachable by phone 24/7, and the landline is what works when the power is out. His cell is supposedly on a super-secure priority line that doesn’t go out when there is a derecho, earthquake or other DC calamity, but we have found that it is not 100% reliable.</p>
<p>Most important reason at our house – the remote monitoring system for my implanted defibrillator requires a landline. Other medical devices may have similar requirements.</p>
<p>Whenever kids call, we can both pick up seperate handsets. Not easily done w/ cellphones.</p>
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Our cell phone plan comes with free nights and weekends, free calls to cell phones on the same network, and you can specify 10 numbers that are free regardless of what service they use.</p>
<p>We share a 2000 minute plan because of DW’s job, but non-work calls that count against our plan add up to maybe 100 minutes a month between the four of us. It always amazes me how few “counted” minutes we use every month.</p>
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<p>Speaker phone :)</p>
<p>We live in earthquake country, so I look at a landline as insurance.</p>
<p>Years ago after a big earthquake a neighbor came by asking if he could borrow a phone. All of his were electronic. And this was someone whose house was otherwise entirely earthquake-safe, with everything bolted down and lots of emergency supplies! He owned an emergency preparedness supply store, and within a few months had made enough of a fortune to move onward and upward. I wonder if he still has the old non-electronic phone we gave him :)</p>
<p>For those worried about radiation, just use a wired headset. You can get a nice one for about $30 (or get one as cheap as $2 off of meritline). No radiation and it’s likely a lot more comfortable than a standard wired phone as well.</p>
<p>Also, if you’re keeping a phone line just to send a fax once in a blue moon you should also look at online alternatives. A few times in college I had to send a fax, and I would use various online sites that would allow up to two pages for free. Beyond that you had to pay, but the price was still well less than I would have shelled out to maintain a phone line.</p>
<p>Reception is so bad in some parts of our state, that when one cell calls another cell, it’s often impossible to decode what’s being said.</p>
<p>Old Bell System employee here… two major reasons to keep a landline for us…</p>
<p>1) As mentioned above, when the power goes out, a landline phone that is “hardwired” will continue to work. Cell towers are not nearly as reliable as the generators for them are typically rated for 4 hours rather than 72 hours like the land lines. Note - I am not talking about VOIP here but a plain old phone line.</p>
<p>2) Our phone number represents the family or the house. When someone calls that number, they expect to get a family member. In the case of my parents or my in laws or either of my college student kids, getting either myself or my wife is generally what they are looking for. Calling a cell phone is calling an individual. When I am home and my wife’s cell phone rings, I don’t answer. Call the house and I do. My mom is perfectly happy getting either my wife or me… she is just wanting to catch up… to “reach out and touch someone.”</p>
<p>re: charging your cell phone in your car, I tried that during our latest outage. Car had to be running, and even then, it took forever. I finally gave up after an hour and it was still just at half power. Mine is a 2009 Honda CR-V. Are there newer cars out there that don’t need to be running while charging?</p>
<p>^^ My 1998 Dodge doesn’t need to be running. I highly doubt your car had to be running either. If anything, the ignition switch might have needed to be turned to ‘accessory’ or ‘on’ but the engine shouldn’t have needed to be running.</p>
<p>Many newer cars (although yours counts as ‘newer’) have ‘12v power outlets’ that stay live all the time.</p>
<p>^^^interseting. I’ll have to go out later and see if it works like you suggest. Is it much of a drain on the car battery though?</p>
<p>There’s not much drain. The capacity of a car battery is far more than the capacity of a cell phone.</p>
<p>If your car indicates the voltage of the battery you’ll be able to see the drain - just note the voltage at the beginning and then an hour or so later when the cell phone s/b mostly charged back up.</p>
<p>Also - most cell phones can be charged many times over from a laptop (of course the laptop needs to charged eventually as well).</p>
<p>We have sometimes gone over our 700 combined family minutes, even with free Verizon to Verizon & free nights & weekends. It is better reception for us to use multiple handsets than speaker phone. We do like to use extensions to all speak with our kids when they call. We aren’t into skype and don’t really like speaker phone much.</p>