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Super Contributor

Getting rid of landline phone

A couple of years ago, I got rid of my classic $35 a month landline service, and went with OOMA internet phone for $4 per month. It has been quite reliable and good quality, not as reliable as landline, but I'd say 98%. No outages, but a few drop-outs.

 

Having said that, it does not support fax machines and alarm systems which rely on landlines. But, who faxes anymore, and any recent alarm systems rely on wired or Wifi internet anymore.

 

Yes, I kind of know that landline is better in a disaster like a hurricane, blah-blah-blah, but paying $370 extra a year wasn't worth it.

 

I still use my old handsets and "ole-fashun" answering machine, and still have my 22 year old phone number. Operationally, nothing has changed... on the surface.

 

If I travel, I turn off my answering machine, and voicemails go to OOMA, then I get an alert on my smartphone, I can listen to them on my Android. Also, I could theoretically move anywhere in the world and keep my Houston TX USA phone number. I would just take the OOMA box, connect it to internet, from a hotel, apartment, vacation rental house, and plug my "ole-fashun" phone into it. Bingo, dial-tone.

 

I do feel better having a home phone, and my old familiar phone number at that. I didn't just want to cut the cord by going to pure mobile phones. It's a nice feeling to have a "home" number.


Sincerely,
Peter
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Trusted Contributor

I have kept my landline phone for I do not have good cell reception where I live.  The cell phone will cut out on calls or sometimes I have to go outside to send a message. 

 

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Getting rid of your landline depends on your individual circumstances.  OOMA is cheap but only if you subscribe to the lowest rate without the other bells and whistles.  If you want to decrease the number of robo calls, you have to pay NoMoRobo a fee to register a cell phone but not on a home phone.

 

I have Consumer Cellular for my landline and cellular provider and my home phone has the Smart Blocker feature so it screens the calls for me in addition to blocking the calls that I have put on the Block list.  Being retired, I spend most of my time at home so friends can reach me there on my "land line".  The problem with my cell phone is that I cannot/do not use it while driving nor can I use it when attending some events/meetings when I am out of the house but friends can always leave me a message at home on my home phone, which I return promptly; this works better than relying only on my cell phone.

 

My home phone answering system announcement also starts with:  "Hello, please put this number on your DO NOT CALL list if you are a telephone solicitor.  Friends, please identify yourself and we'll answer if available, othewise we shall return your call as soon as we can."

 

This tends to screen out a lot of callers, which may then added to my Smart Caller Block list on my home phone.  I have friends listed on my Smart Caller Allow list so they are not blocked when calling us.

 

This setup seems to work best for us but you need to assess your particular situation.

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Contributor

I got rid of my land line over 2 years ago. The only calls I was receiving was from telemarketers. Don't miss it at all.

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Newbie

When I moved from Florida to rural Alabama, the local phone company simply refused to give me a land line of any type.  They say they have no available lines and have no intention of adding any.  Fortunately, my cell phone gets good coverage here.

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Newbie

I can not afford to pay a century link and ATT how can I get a copper wire connection with phone service delivered thru the telecom bill my husband passed away can u please help me I am      80 years old.

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Trusted Contributor

Thanks for all the valuable info you supplied.  

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I have a smartphone, but I keep my landline for where I live the cell reception is spotty so I depend on the landline for clarity of conversations.  My son visits from TX and he has AT&T for a carrier and in order to use his phone he has to drive in his car for a mile and a half to get a few bars.  He, too, depends on my landline when he visits to make calls to his job.

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I have been an expert on economy telephone service for years.

 

I recommend the OBi202 telephone adapter for VOIP landline service. It supports Google Voice with two phone lines -- one line can be used for fax. You can buy an OBi202 at Amazon, Walmart, Newegg, and other places.

 

The OBi202 with Google Voice provides unlimited FREE calling with caller ID, voicemail, and texting throughout the United States and Canada. The voice quality is usually as good or better than a traditional landline.

 

You can add 911 service to the OBi for a small fee. International calls are usually only two cents per minute. You can take the OBi with you anywhere you travel and you can also make FREE calls between two OBis over the Internet anywhere in the world.

 

Internet service is all I pay for. I get the new customer special every time I renew my service because I call my cable company and tell them I cannot afford to pay the full price with my limited retirement income. The cable company representative then forwards me to the retention department and eventually I am offered a new customer Internet-only service contract at a greatly reduced rate.

 

Many seniors can qualify for a FREE smartphone at qlinkwireless(com). Then you will have 1,000 minutes of talk time, unlimited texting, and 1Gb of data per month. International texting and 911 service are included. All for FREE.

 

Q Link Wireless also offers a bring-your-own-phone option. I have a Samsung Galaxy S4 SPH-L720 smartphone which has a removable battery and a 64GB microSD card. This is a quality phone with a good camera. I bought it used on eBay for about $40.

 

I use the Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K for television programming. The Firestick can stream many good movies and TV shows for FREE. I also share a subscription to Netflix, Curiosity Stream, and Amazon Prime Video. Many other FREE or low-cost streaming video services are available.  

 

I never pay for cable TV or pay-per-view television. I use an off-air antenna for FREE local HD television reception.

 

The OBi and the Firestick require a bit of programming. Go to obitalk(com) to learn how to program the OBi. Go to troypoint(com) to learn how to program the Firestick. If you don't want to do the programming yourself, find a teenager who loves computers and the Internet. She or he will do this for a peanut butter sandwich, a glass of milk, and the learning experience.

 

I have a Chromebook, too!

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I live in a household with 4 other people (daughter, son-in-law and 2 granddaughters) and we ALL have our own cell phones. They are all iphone folks. I have an Android smartphone. We all love them. 24/7 accessibility isn't such a good idea if you have a boss who thinks you're on call all the time, but if you need to make sure your grandchildren are fine, it's great! I'll take the possible downside.

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I am beginning to think that many of you misunderstood my comment to mean that I am against cell phones.  I am not.  In fact, I keep a backup in case I lose mine.   However, after working for a wireless company for a short time and getting some pretty irate calls when a customer lost and or had a device that was stolen or malfunctioning, I was merely sharing some of what I thought were downfalls.  From some of my responses, I created a small uproar. So sorry!!

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I still have my landline phone as well as my cell.  I live in a valley between 2 mountains and cell reception is bad - most times only have one bar, and on good days maybe 2.  If I want to carry on a conversation, my landline is needed.  I take my cell phone in the car when I travel, but at home I still need my landline.

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I removed the landline years ago.  Probably 10 at this point.  Mainly because of the extreme cost of local service with Verizon.  I have Consumer Cellular that works just great for half the cost I had to pay with Verizon.  I have had no issues and a big plus is the lack of sales calls. 

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I gave up the landline tether 5 years ago and only regret it when I have misplaced my phone and can’t call it to find it

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Regular Social Butterfly

I just wish there was a better solution to being on hold all the time. You'd think texting would fix that problem. But, it doesn't seem to be that popular yet. Being on hold really eats-up/ties-up the minutes/service for no good reason. I'd bet that alone would relieve a lot of traffic-jams/dropped-calls.

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Ditched my landline years ago. Never looked back. Why? SPAM calls! They never quit! Day, night, weekends, holidays. And it's NEVER anyone I want to speak with. 24 hours after we dropped the landline my wife looked-up from reading the newspaper and said, "It's so quiet!"

 

My cell never rings unless it is someone I know. NEVER! If I don't know who is calling, the call isn't ignored, it just automatically goes directly to voicemail. Just like the 'good old days' of landline when you weren't home. If they don't leave a message I probably didn't want to speak with them. If they do, and it turns out I will need to hear from them again, I add them to my contacts list and next time they call the phone rings normally. 

 

Tell me how to do that with 100% RELIABILITY on your landline. And you know that 'Do Not Call' thing is worthless, right? (Hint: It only works for the 'good guys'.) Don't want to be disturbed by anyone while on that special night out? Simple. Either leave it home or just turn it off!

 

Who says technology is a bad thing? Sure, you can waste a lot of time doing other things with it, but do you have to? It's called 'will-power'. Try it.

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What we seem to forget is that 1, cell phones are easily lost and or stolen, 2, and most importantly they are not the best healthwise especially considering the frequency with which we would have to use them if we cut our landlines, and 3, with towers constantly being overloaded, after working for a wireless company fact is, an old-fashioned landline is a credible backup.

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Don't get rid of your landline number but port it over to Google voice, since likely, most of us have internet. With Google voice, your landline number becomes a VOIP number. You'll first have to port it to a mobile number, since Google voice only accepts mobile numbers for porting, since Google voice does not support 911 location. Currently Google voice is free for unlimited US calls.  It also provides a spam filter, caller ID, text messaging and call blocking. With an Obihai 200 device, $40 on Amazon, your wired phone can be used as your Google voice phone. So now we use the Google voice phone for long calls, and Tmobile cellphone, $10 refresh per year for legacy pay as you go plan, or $3/month for current pay as you go plan, for short away from home calls. As long as you have internet, Google voice can travel with you. Just take your phone and Obihai200 where ever you go and have internet.

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Regular Social Butterfly

VOIP is, of course, popular but I know of no one that has theeir router installed properly.  There should be a physical wire from the router to the outside to function as an antenna for location determination.

 

WiFi calling resolves that issue in your own home.  When you set up WiFi calling, you must put in your address.  When the address can not be determined via the antenna, that address is used.  The downside is that you could be using WiFi calling elsewhere (naturally, with no antenna) and your home address will be given.  That's why it's ESSENTIAL to always give your actual address to the 911 operator.

 

The only surefire solution is POTS but virtually no one uses that anymore.

~~~
Start every day with a smile and get it over with.
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I just hope you are still not renting your old phone. If you are, cancel the rental. The phone company cannot be bothered to pick it up. It’s worthless to them. There maybe value as an antique.

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Regular Contributor

I still keep my landline, as I have elderly relatives who remember my home phone (it hasn't changed in years) but can't always recall my cell number.  I also like to be able to limit what types of calls come to my cell.

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I  will not get rid of my landline. I pay $15 a month for straightalk and can take it where I go , since i work and live in  different states. When at home once, I suffered a stroke and could not see nor walk. I crawled to my end table in my living room and yanked the phone off the table and was barely able to call for help I have since recovered and had heart surgery. 

 

there was no way i could "find" my cell phone and half the time they don't have a signal, lose their charge, etc. 

 

Kudos to phones that are landlines, and hardwired at that!! no rechargeables for me! 

 

I was told if I had not called for help I would have died there in my home. 

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Trusted Contributor

In Colorado, we dropped our landline (and our DSL as well, since its speed was terrible) and went strictly with cellphone service and cable internet. When we moved to Iowa (job-related), we had to get a landline. We live in a "hole" - tall bluffs on three sides and a steep road to more hills on that one other side, so we get almost no (and intermittent) cell signal. We had considered just going with DSL for our wifi when we first moved in - until we discovered the cellphone problems. So, yeah; we still have the landline. We *could* go with a bundle from the cable company here, but their service is SO bad (they're rated one of the worst in the country), I'd rather go with smoke signals and watch TEEVEE on the microwave than go with them for our internet and phone services.

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In addition to having a cell phone, I have maintained a landline using a voice over IP service such as Majic Jack, which only costs about $25 per YEAR.  

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Silver Conversationalist

I do freelance writing from my home online. I have NO need of a cell phone since I'm rarely out on the road. Even before I retired, I traveled 21 miles each way to my job for 15 years and didn't need a cell phone. 

 

I am just a little fed up with being told what I must and must not have, do, say or need. I didn't need Cable TV or the obscene monthly Cable bill. But, oh no. Some toady hot for profit decides Cable TV is a must have. Down came the antenna and up went the cost of watching TV. Which, by the way, I rarely do...writers sit at computer nearly 8 hours a day. 

 

Then, I pay the Cable TV bill and what do I get? Junk TV programs with more commercials than programming. This is what I pay for? And, I wouldn't mind the commercials so much but the programs are straight out of DogPatch USA. I have no identification with Alaskan Wilderness Residents, Duck Dynasty, Honey Boo Boo, Dance Moms and that screaming Mimi Abby Lee, the Jersey Shore get rich quick kids or the Moonshiners. This is what I pay for? 

 

Try to watch a movie and what do you get? 15 commercials and one half hour of a movie so badly cut to ribbons, it makes no sense. 

 

Now, land lines have gotten in some Twerpie Generation Twit's craw? And just how much will this added cost burden end up being every month? 

 

 

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I use Roku. Internet only is needed to access a lot of thousands of stations in a platter. These cable TV companies are a ripoff! Crackle, free, TubiTV free. Free news from around the world. Netflix, $9 a month no commercials! 

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Honored Social Butterfly

No phones were allowed to be kept only the battery boxes those are somewhere in the garage. About the only oddball phones that I think I still have are 3-4 line Bakelite vintage 1930-ish Western Electric from my days spent working for the original telco.

The telco in town realized that their equipment (always think of Lily Tomlinson when I say that line) was fetching $500 in antique telco sales.
Their original in house switchboard (really in the house of switchboard operator and owner of telco) was found and sold for scrap 3 years back.

People didn't know it spent the last several years under leaking pipes and all the relays were encrusted.
Frozen
And yes, after long days/nights, I'd still like to swing these hunks of glass , plastic and silicon against the nearest wall Come on retirement!
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Social Butterfly

I have to keep my land line because I don't have a cell phone.

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Honored Social Butterfly

I kinda wish we had been allowed by the phone exchange up here to keep our old 3 crank phones but wasn't in the cards.
We were only allowed the oak boxes with dry cell batteries. Nope not in the early 1900's more like 1972, and went straight from cra
nk to touch tone no dial phones up here.

Frozen
And yes, after long days/nights, I'd still like to swing these hunks of glass , plastic and silicon against the nearest wall Come on retirement!
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Super Contributor

Please post some pictures of those old phones, I'd love to see them!

Sincerely,
Peter
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