T-mobile has a new @home service, in which you purchase a wireless broadband router for $50, pay them $10 per month in addition to your usual cell plan, and plug a regular telephone into the router. Presto! Home phone to replace your landline service, for only $10 per month (you still have to pay whoever for your broadband service, which isn’t included).
15% of people in the U.S. don’t even have a landline phone any more. They just use their cell phones.
Others use services like Skype to make calls.
What do you do? What do you think about all this?
I’m hesitant to give up having a landline phone — even for something like @home. Sure, it would be cheaper than our regular monthly phone bill, and we’d still have a central number for the family (my kids are too young to carry a cell).
But what happens when the power goes out? A cell phone will have power for a while at least. I suppose we could always keep charging them in the car — as long as we still have gas.
A broadband router will not work with the power out, though. Heck, our regular cordless phone won’t work when the power is out. That’s why we keep an old-fashioned Princess phone upstairs — it requires no electricity to operate. As long as the phone lines still work, the phone works, too. We can make 911 calls, check in with friends and family, or report the power outage that’s got everything else down.
I’m hesitant to put all my trust in cellular and broadband technology at this point.
They can have my landline when they pry it from my cold dead fingers. If I’d ever had more than three cell phone conversations without at least one reception-inspired “Huh? Sorry, what’d you say?”, I might be convinced to go all-cell, but for now, forget it.
Not that I’m nuts about the phone company either. I have DSL through the famous one with 3 letters and an &, and it goes out if there’s a storm two counties away.
I’m thinking of giving mine up, only because no one answers it anyway. We all have cell phones.
I thought I was the only one that didn’t answer the landline. I don’t know why I have one.
I have mine for internet. I guess I could ditch the dish and go back to cable.
[...] McDade explores her conundrum in “Landline or Cell?”: I’m hesitant to give up having a landline phone – even for something like @home. Sure, it would [...]
The popularity of landlines is in serious decline if we can believe the Dept of Labor. Have a look at a very interesting graph on the following site:
http://www.bls.gov/cex/cellphones2007.htm
If you look at the current trend landlines will all but disappear in a few years’ time.
And it seems more and more Americans, now about 18%, are using cell phones as an only means of staying in touch (Reuters: http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSTRE4BG5GH20081217 )
I think that in these tough times a lot of people are going to have to choose between landlines and cell phones. And frankly, for me a prepaid package, and using it less, is the only way to go if you want to save money. My trusty Tracfone is serving me very well.