Do You Still Have a Landline? - Comments Page 3

Thanks for the information on the advantages of keeping our land line phone service, Bob. I have
land line and also cell phones, and don't plan on
giving up the land line service.

>>If you switch to VoIP, keep a cell phone fully charged and handy.

Even better advice (assuming you own a car) is to make sure you have a car charger for your cellphone. This was a lifesaver (not literally) for me a few years ago when we had a multi-day power outage after a hurricane.

Agreed I am a Magic Jack customer and have been pretty happy with my service. $29.99 a year and they have a pretty cool voicemail system that will actually email you a audio file of your voicemail!

I plan on being the last person to talk on a land line. I don't want anything to do with a cloud. I have a cell phone, but only for emergencies. AT&T offers 2Go phones for that purpose. You can set up a phone line for just $10.00. I just wanted a cell phone in case I need to call 911 or if my car breaks down.

The legacy landline telephone companies have squeezed every penny out of the copper cable plant that they can. Much of it has been to the detriment of their subscribers. But it's fair to say that politicians and lawyers have been the real reason that this is so. The one trench proposal by the Obama administration is laughable. In the land of the lawsuit what you can count on is that voice communication will degrade to the point of being unusable while lawyers fight over networks. The cable companies have their own interest in seeing that nothing but coax cable is delivered to your home and no interest in supporting VoIP other than over their own separate facilities. The state PUC's regulated the traditional landline, and for better or worse, it worked! The FCC by comparison is pretty much hands off this wild west VoIP service that we have now. As one who was an early VoIP victim of losing the phone number I had for 20 years to a company that disappears in the night, I have no illusions that any voice service be it cell, landline or VoIP will be available or reliable in ten years time.

I used to have MagicJack until they sent me an email saying if i don't renew within 30 minutes i'm out, with a clock in the background clicking down. My yearly membership wasn't even up. I dropped them and went to Amazon and found Net Talk and i haven't had a problem since. For $30 a year it's worth it.

Hi Bob: I noticed that you failed to mention Magic Jack in this article - even though you have given it positive reviews in the past. I have been using MJ for about 9 months with no problems. The MJ service also works well with transmitting faxes - unlike other VOIP services I have used in the past.

I have been using Magic Jack, which is a type of VoIP, for nearly 1 year. It saves me money but you are at the mercy of the Internet. The good thing is if the electricity is gone I have to resort to Cell. But I do get any message the called left. So Electricity or not, the caller get a chance to leave me a message. I get a email message with the recorder message when I can get my email. Magic Jack also has its Draw back, because I am limited where I can call. I need a VoIP where I can call anywhere in the world, even if I have to pay long distance charges.

We have VoIP service through our Comcast "triple-play" bundle for the past eight years or so and have never missed the landline and associated high costs (mostly "fees" and taxes). I attached a UPS to the internet/phone modem which keeps it operational during power outages but I also have a mobile phone for when that fails. I can't imagine ever going back to a traditional POTS line. Customer support from US West/Qwest/CenturyLink was terrible and the cost was astronomical compared to what I get with Comcast. I'm a very happy customer with Comcast and their customer service has improved dramatically.

We used to have MagicJack and used it for several years. The voice quality wasn't good and their support is horrible when there's an issue, so I dumped them about two or three years ago and never regretted it.

I also have VoIP for my business line. I started using 1-VoIP (www.1-VoIP.com) a year ago and love them! Great customer support and reliable service. I can activate my VoIP app on my mobile phone and place calls and have my business Caller-ID show up on the recipient's phone when I'm out of the office. They have residential plans that start at $8.97/month.

We have Vonage, but our 'home line' has been cut to their $12 / month limited package. This gets us pretty good reliability without their high costs.

For us, I need my kids (or a sitter) to be able to dial 9-1-1 if a cell phone carrying adult is not in the house.

I have a second unlimited Vonage line for my home office. Vonage is super reliable for long conference calls which works better for me than some of the other vendors.

We have Vonage, but our 'home line' has been cut to their $12 / month limited package. This gets us pretty good reliability without their high costs.

For us, I need my kids (or a sitter) to be able to dial 9-1-1 if a cell phone carrying adult is not in the house.

I have a second unlimited Vonage line for my home office. Vonage is super reliable for long conference calls which works better for me than some of the other vendors.

My mother and I both have cell phones and we also use a landline. In my opinion, a landline phone is more reliable than a cell phone.

We transferred our land line number to Google Voice about three years ago. So now all calls to that number (95% of which are telemarketers) go directly to voicemail, and a (pretty good) transcript is emailed to me. It's much more convenient to filter telephone calls that way.

All our other calls are done via cell phones. Yes, there's some risk that cellular service might be disrupted in an emergency. (I live in Southern California, and the 1994 Northridge earthquake hammered us pretty heavily.) But we also have a DSL connection to the Internet. So if our cell phones failed, the DSL connection provides a communications fallback option, and I doubt that the risk with DSL is significantly different than with a land line. (We also have various backup equipment and battery power converters which would let us keep our DSL and computers operating in the event of a power blackout. Plus we have solar panels.)

So at least in our case I'm quite happy to be rid of a superfluous and expensive land line.

With all the "problems" with power outages disabling some phone service choices and internet service, can I assume there will soon be an article describing the convenience of having a battery powered UPS?

One of mine is used for my 'modem' and WiFi router; I have three - the others backup my TV and my cordless landline. I haven't had any weather-related interruptions since I started using them, often to notify the electric company that the power was out in my area.

You forgot to mention the extreme EMF problem with VOIP phones. They are on 24/7 and put out more power than a cell phone. I had Vonage and went to a land line and am very happy with it. I also, ditched my WIFI on my router and got rid of portable phones around the house. Much quieter now. I still use my smart phone, but only in emergencies.

I moved my landline number to Google Voice about a year ago. I bought an Obi200 device that plugs into my router and a regular cordless phone system plugs into the Obi device. I get all the benefits of Google Voice (transcripts, phone forwarding, multiple device rings) and no phone bill. Cost $20 to port number to Google and the Obi device was less than $40. No bills otherwise and has worked great.

How can you not add magic jack plus as an option? Is unlimited free calls to the US, hawaii, PR and canada. And yes you can call anywhere in the world for extra fees like everyone else and the best is they are the cheapest, very small and when you travel you can take with you, connect it to the internet wherever you are and make and receive calls for free to and from the US and the caller in the US is only making a local call with no cost to them from a cell, landline or VOIP phones.

The voice quality is as good as landlines or cells and I have had it for over 5 yrs and use one for my faxes. True the customer service sucks but doesn't everyone else's? Try Comcast or ATT.

I am over 65 and kept my landline. Att wanted me to move to UVerse or use VOIP with a battery back up (good for 8 hours) I kept the ATT DSL because Uverse messed up my internet connection and kept my ATT landline. I want a reliable phone. The landline has worked for me all of my life, why change?

I had Magic-jack years ahead of AT&T and really was not wild about moving to VoIP for a home line. All you need is another Katrina type event or anything that removes your towers or satellites and you may wish you could call 911 or the local police. Sound quality from Taiwan to the US was so good over my Magic-Jack you had to ask if they were still on the line. So far AT&T sound quality has been comparable. Oh yea, I've fallen down and can't get up would be worthless under a for mentioned conditions. Great article, PMW

Cordless landline phone probably for life at this point..easier to use & better reception then cell, which I do have but don't really use. I've also noticed that people on cells tend to raise their voice & you can pretty much hear both sides of the conversation if you're in the same room, landlines have better sound quality and don't usually broadcast your conversation to the rest of the household..