Phones Without Homes

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  • Posted By: robertkjjj @ 07/29/2008 8:54:55 AM

    I get where the trendy author is going with this, but how does one write an article comparing land lines and cell phones without even mentioning the main reason why people stay with land lines: quality of service? Given the choice of the two, who makes a call from their home on their cell phone? My land line doesn???t drop calls at random 2-3 times day. My land line always has crystal-clear reception. My land line has 100% real-time conversations without any weird ???talk-over??? delays. Compared to land lines, both cell phones and Internet phone service are immature technologies, and each have many years to go to reach the quality of land-line calls. I???ll hold on to the land-line as long as I can afford it.

    • Posted By: fredct @ 07/29/2008 9:25:43 AM

      > Given the choice of the two, who makes a call from their home on their cell phone?

      Me, constantly. I dropped my landline a while back, but for years I constantly made calls from my cell instead when I had both. I haven't had a phone call dropped on my cells in months if not longer - I can't even remember the last time - and I find the voice quality to be better. I understand that's not the case in all places in the country or even on all blocks in any given city/town, but there are many many places where it is true.

      As far as the person mentioning privacy, cell phone transmissions are encrypted on any modern technology, and very hard to intercept. I won't claim impossible, but hard. Meanwhile, using a cordless phone, the signal can be picked up easily by anyone within several hundred feet without an protection at all. Unless you're paranoid enough to sit in one placed on a corded phone (and its not like it'd be that hard for a motivated spyer to tap into that either), cell phones about as protected as it gets.

  • Posted By: Navy Retired @ 07/29/2008 9:14:26 AM

    I have version land line, but I use my cell phone for all long distance. I guess version figured this out and now charge a flat fee of $30 a month for long distance calls weather you use the service or not. That is enough to tick me off enough to consider dropping the land line!

  • Posted By: Klement @ 07/29/2008 9:08:29 AM

    People do not realize that cell phones and wireless phones are regularly spied on by other people and also the government and who knows who else using scanners. Everyone talks of invasion of privacy etc. but do not take the trouble to see what they are giving up. In the drive to deregulate, the Carter administration opened up the added costs of access fees, increased taxes etc. which has driven up the cost of land lines so much that even I finally gave up and gave up my land line.wemt only to

  • Posted By: vippy @ 07/29/2008 8:42:42 AM

    Basic phone rate in Texas is $ 9,.00, $ 12.00 added to it are taxes - and that is the reason
    I will give up my landline.

  • Posted By: smage11 @ 07/29/2008 8:33:37 AM

    Until the cost of overseas calls on cell phones goes down I won't be cutting my landline.

  • Posted By: Akmatic @ 07/29/2008 8:20:54 AM

    I haven't had a land line for about 5 years now (currently 30) b/c it was a total waste of money between the standard fee they charge for the line itself on top of the various taxes that are applied to said 'fee'. It's not even worth it to get a phone line with one of the cable packages b/c you're still paying more than you would be without it after their promotional time frames run out.

  • Posted By: BlickTX @ 07/29/2008 8:20:18 AM

    We had both. Nearing our 70's the landline was a holder -- until the service was lost for a week and we never noticed it. And that was over five years ago! We never had the line fixed, just removed the service and continued with the better service (at better pricing) that our cell phones offerred. Double the convenience at a lesser cost. Sorry it has taken others so long to learn the same lesson.

  • Posted By: magali @ 07/28/2008 3:35:27 PM

    I can't believe you didn't mention all the fees that are slapped onto a land line. I would vastly prefer to keep my telephone at home. I had a basic land line, no long distance, no call waiting, no frills. The FCC and government fees and taxes doubled the cost over the years. I finally gave up two years ago and got a cheap throwaway phone. No more fees save for sales tax. I'd rather have my land line back, though.

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