When ATT was the only source they killed their own business with so many Plans, extra fees, pages of them and their ongoing escalating pricing policies. The starw that broke my back was when I was billed a large fee to cancel my service.
What's really killing the land-line phone business.
When ATT was the only source they killed their own business with so many Plans, extra fees, pages of them and their ongoing escalating pricing policies. The starw that broke my back was when I was billed a large fee to cancel my service.
Perhaps the land lines would do slightly better if it didn't take SEVERAL WEEKS to get set up? The last time i moved, I was without a landline for over 6 weeks while Verizon supposedly processed my request and set up my access. I can walk into a mobile phone store and have a working phone number in minutes.
And yet A.T.&T treats me (a land-line customer) like dirt! I am on permanent disability and have trouble making ends meet. I got behind a month on making payments and every month for 2 or 3 days they shut off my long distance. When I get my disability check I make a payment and long distance comes back on. I made arrangements to pay the overdue balance and when my phone bill came I (with Advanced Degrees) couldn't understand it. So I called for an explanation. This happened every month for three months. Each time I called, I got a different story. Finally, in the end, they told me I had defaulted on my agreement with them and I was right back where I started. The problem is I am one of the few people who really can't justify a cell phone. But I can't begin to tell you how much I hate A.T.&T. (Where the customer comes last)!
I agree. AT&T sucks!! I've never gotten good customer service from them...AND it takes FOREVER to get a real person on the line.I've never felt like they really care about their customers. They've become suck a mega-giant in the phone industry, maybe they feel like they don't have to. I only have a land line because I had to in order to get my internet service...they wouldn't let me opt out of it....so I pay the extra $40 a month for a phone I don't use...well...maybe once in a while when my cell phone battery is dead.
You need to call AT&T and play hardnose to get their "naked DSL". It's where you get DSL without having to have a landline as well.
I completely agree. AT&T sucks. I've never gotten good customer service from them and it's takes FOREVER to get a real person on the line in the first place.
Piracy is alive and well at your local land-line phone company. My $30/month line costs $50/mo, including fees, taxes, long distance non-usage penalties, ad nauseum. We are charged a $5/month penalty for failure to use long distance (our family is all in Dallas). Furthermore, two years ago, one excise tax was dropped by the government, but immediately replaced by a telephone company "Cost recovery fee" for the same amount. Most people never noticed the tax savings because of the new fee! Who thought you need a ship and body of water to be a pirate? I'm not happy about it, but our community has no alternative. Thanks for listening.
You need to just get the most basic service with NO long-distance. The cost, usually, for most basic is approximately 11 bucks. After taxes, it adds up to around less than 20 bucks total. For long distance sign up with one of the non-Bell LD carriers such as one called Pioneer. They don't charge you anything except for the long distance calls you make and their rate is about 3 cents a minute for nationwide calls. Put our mom on this plan and her phone bill from the Bell is less than 20 bucks and she only uses about a coupla bucks of long distance a month. At those rates she doesn't have any incentive to use her cellphone.
another reason why I don't bother with land lines. so much money and for what!!!???
There are still rural areas, particularly in the mountainous West where the terrain doesn't allow for cell coverage and being rural, the telcos do not have a large enough populace to fork out the costs to run broadband. I have a home in a very mountainous and very rural area in Northern California and though there is cell coverage in the area, the mountains and ridges prevent my cell phone from getting reception at the house so thus no choice but to keep the landline and also the local carrier has no financial incentive to run DSL to the the half dozen homes that cover a distance of about 5 miles in a deep valley road.
Sad to say, landlines are definitely on the way out... About 5 years ago I got rid of my Bell Telephone service and went with Vonage VOIP. For just a little over $30/month (including ALL taxes, fees, etc) I can talk for an UNLIMITED amount of time to anywhere in the US, Canada or Puerto Rico - not sure if Mexico is included in that or not. Other international calls can be made for low, reasonable fees, although I do not use that part of the service. Also, all the features I had with my land-line are included with my VOIP - caller ID, call waiting, voice mailbox, three-way calling, and so on.
I have a cell phone to use primarily when I am out of the house and "need" to make a call, but, like the land-line service, figuring out the monthly bill in advance can give one a headache. Fees for added features (like caller id, call waiting, etc), roaming charges, and long distance charges to anywhere not in the covered area make some cell carriers a fearful lot indeed.
Some land-line companies (I am thinking of a few I know of in Canada) offer unlimited long distance calling for a set fee (around $20/month). There is no good reason that ANY land-line company should be charging on a per minute basis for such service. If you stop and think, the money they would save in their billing department alone would almost offset any profits they would "lose" from dropping the per minute charges for LD.
Basically, I would probably prefer to HAVE an "old fashioned" land-line phone if the costs were more reasonable, but as for now VOIP is serving me VERY well. The service is great, as is the voice quality. And I NEVER have any surprises at the end of the month when my bill comes in!
Sad to say, landlines are definitely on the way out... About 5 years ago I got rid of my Bell Telephone service and went with Vonage VOIP. For just a little over $30/month (including ALL taxes, fees, etc) I can talk for an UNLIMITED amount of time to anywhere in the US, Canada or Puerto Rico - not sure if Mexico is included in that or not. Other international calls can be made for low, reasonable fees, although I do not use that part of the service. Also, all the features I had with my land-line are included with my VOIP - caller ID, call waiting, voice mailbox, three-way calling, and so on.
I have a cell phone to use primarily when I am out of the house and "need" to make a call, but, like the land-line service, figuring out the monthly bill in advance can give one a headache. Fees for added features (like caller id, call waiting, etc), roaming charges, and long distance charges to anywhere not in the covered area make some cell carriers a fearful lot indeed.
Some land-line companies (I am thinking of a few I know of in Canada) offer unlimited long distance calling for a set fee (around $20/month). There is no good reason that ANY land-line company should be charging on a per minute basis for such service. If you stop and think, the money they would save in their billing department alone would almost offset any profits they would "lose" from dropping the per minute charges for LD.
Basically, I would probably prefer to HAVE an "old fashioned" land-line phone if the costs were more reasonable, but as for now VOIP is serving me VERY well. The service is great, as is the voice quality. And I NEVER have any surprises at the end of the month when my bill comes in!
And for our next article; What killed the pony express.
yeah, I get your point, but for some of us, the mail service would be cheaper with ponies.
(psssssst) International rates my friend, that's where cell service still doesn't compete in terms of pricing, not even close. So, it's not a slame dunk necessarily.
Until the cost of overseas calls on cell phones goes down I won't be cutting my land line.
yeah, i said the same thing in my post as well...I have a good cell plan, but boy do they rake me over the coals for an international call!!! about $20 for ah hour!!! OUCH! A few cents a minute for landline international calls.
I've been tossing around the idea of getting rid of my landline. I have Vonage digital landline phone service and it's quite cheap for general service fees. However, where it really saves me money is in international calls. I have a good cell phone plan, but if I make a call overseas I'm pusihng back my retirement a few more years!! With my landline, I pay only a few cents a minute for international. For now I"m keeing my landline until cell companies get more competitive with international pricing. So, moral of the story is, getting rid of a landline makes sense for many, but not for all. And, the contracts that cell companies lock you into is more corrupt than the landline companies. New court case in California will hopefully change that for other states.
OK, but just wait until you get your brain tumor or other serious problem from putting a radiating cell phone next to your head for hours each month. About ten to twenty years of constant use should do it. (much quicker than cigarettes harm you) according to the latest research. Ah well, what's life after forty anyway???
Well, ah, I use telephones to talk to people. Not to take pictures, play games, listen to music, surf the net, or other activities that will just run down the battery to the point that I can't use it in case of emergency (to my mind, the only real use I would have for a cell phone). I have VoIP at home; it costs, with taxes & fees, $20.04, and gives me 500 minutes a month. That's eight hours and twenty minutes a month. I seldom go over, let's see, 64 minutes on my plan, leaving 436 minutes. I also used 15 free minutes, which would be incoming calls. I really try to get people I know (those who call long distance) to let me call them back, since I have such a surplus most every month.
I wished I'd ditched my land-line years earlier than I did. And once I did, I've never looked back! I ABSOLUTELY HATE with a passion the big, monopolystic phone companies who think they are the only game in town and thus, don't have to answer to their customers. I was sick and tired of inflated bills, of being nickeled and dimed to death, of CONSTANTLY incorrect bills that you'd have to deal with rude, snarky and incompetent customer service reps (a misnomer if ever there was one!), often spending HOURS on the phone with them, to get fixed. With my VOIP phone, I pay a set fee that I can consistently budget for without surprise each month; I get free features standard that I would have been nickeled and dimed to death for with a landline phone company... it's just SOOOOO much better.
What is killing the landline is the telemarketers, the survey takers and every idiot that thinks that there purpose or point of view deserves to be pushed into everyone else's face. "I want to say what I want to say and it doesn't matter if you want to hear it or not. Sort of the kind of mindset where people stick in comments about Obama and the media when the topic is telephone landlines. No wonder they have no problem finding people to make the calls, there are so may of these people out there.
Why does Obama get an unfair amount of coverage? Does no one in the news have any ethics anymore? The coverage should be fair so people can make up their own minds, not be lead like blind sheep.
Why does Obama get an unfair amount of coverage?
What is a landline telephone?
I just wonder what all these people who have decided to depend on their cell phones and internet phones will do if there is some kind of disaster that takes down a large part of the power grid. When that happens there will be no internet or cellular phone service. Landlines do not depend on the power grid for their service so they will still work. This is one of the major reasons I will not let my wife drop our landlines, that plus cell service is not consistant, even in a major metropolitan area such as we live in.
If a large disaster takes down the "grid", I'll loot and pillage like everyone else.
If a disaster takes down a large part of the power grid, I'll just loot and pillage like everyone else.
Correct, land lines can work off their backup generators at the switch or a remote carrier site if the power grid goes out, but most cell towers have generators too. So, they tie on that point. Drop your land line and, if your power is out for an extended period, charge your cell phone using your car. You'll save some money, assuming you don't need DSL or one of the telco offered video services. The residential market for data and video will be split between the cable companies and the telcos, with the cable companies having a head start on the video side. It will be interesting to see if the telcos can afford to place facilities in new areas if they can only get 20%-30% of the homeowners as customers.
Actually you were correct when phones were electrical, but phones now are switched by computers and use electronic switches. Those computers require the grid. Power outages will affect your land lines too. If they have backup systems, they will be ok for a while provided, trunk lines don't fill up and cells have backup power. Last power outage that I went through, which lasted 11 hours. My cell phone was still fine
In Kobe, Japan when they had their earthquake about 13 years ago, All land line service was lost in the area and land lines connecting outside the area. There were a few people with cell phones at aht time, but they were the only ones getting through. I guy went on a trip and returned home to find the house had collapsed. Had no idea where his family was. He used his cell and found them alive.
In Kobe, Japan when their earthquake struck, land line service was out. Most people with cell phones were still able to contact their loved ones. One person was on a trip and found his family at a different house since theirs collapsed but everyone survived. He was later able to meet up with his family. Most cells, at least in Japan, have backup power, land lines are not guaranteed. It seems lik eyou nee both.
Most
wireless is a godsend. I spent two months without any power in South Florida after hurricane Wilma, and we made due with our cel phones and absolutely no working land lines. There were no traffic signals, power for our computers, the joy of sitting in 2-3 hour lines for gas, groceries, and walgreens, and double that amount for traffic to keep on moving with our lives. Having our cel phones allowed us to continue during a terrible time, go to work, pay our bills. My office was destroyed, but I was able to keep in touch with my employers during a state of emergency which lasted for two months. not everything is about your quasi intellectual policy -green-wasteful bla bla bla bull crap. you would not have had the internet connection to post this message much less a land line to use in this situation.
you also spelled hypocrite wrong you computer using hypocrite. go hug a tree and clean a land fill you quasi tree hugger.
And you spelled cell phone wrong...it's CELL...not CEL
hehehe touche
Land lines have become a huge fraud. There is only one phone company we can use in our apartment complex - like many comments before, the $29.95 a month service ends up being nearly $50 a month without long distance. The only calls we ever got were never-ending telemarketers, so we had the line disconnected (and it took them months to get us our credit balance and deposit to us - we had to threaten small claims court!). Now - we STILL get telemarketers calling! I asked what number they were calling, and finally one was able to tell me. I dialed that number and got a "circuit busy" recording. So we've unplugged all the phones... What a scam...
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