Juan Foote

I've a question and was curious about whether you use a hardline phone at your home?

genec

We stopped using the hardline back in about 2010... we later moved to a new area, had to establish new TV/internet service, and were told that the service was bundled with a hardline. We never used the hardline.

Several years later, we decided to upgrade service... as our then ISP was dropping TV service. We found out the ISP had a much faster internet service available to our area for no higher cost, and we no longer needed a hardline (which we had never used).

Now we are with a much faster (albeit, not local ISP) and they too bundled a hardline with their cable/internet service. Again... have never used it nor the email accounts offered. The biggest reason for refusing these services is that we are well established customers with various businesses that are keyed to either or both our existing phone numbers (mobile) and or email.

More and more we are seeing that the physical home address is less important than "identity" via mobile device (often using passwords with authentication).

Can you even get a text "authentication" via a hardline?

We have also become more "mobile" and at different times of the year, can and will be at different physical locations... so hardlines won't do us a lot of good in such situations.

mtnbud

I still have a landline that I really need to get rid of. It's the phone # recorded for a lot of my accounts, but about the only phone calls I get on it are telemarketers...

skijor

Not since ~'09. And I still get bs calls on my cell. No wonder nobody answers their phone on the first go round anymore (unless it's clear it's legit).

zandoval 

Gotta a Landline on a Recorder. Every now and then the public/published number is called with something important. Did you know that you can still get ahold of Medicare Government Offices for Medicare Billing on a land line with a 56K modem... Ha

Homebrew01

Cancelled a few years ago.

skidder

I've got Frontier bundled service (TV/Cable/landline phone) and called up to cancel the phone service. They 'opted' me into a subsidized service to keep the landline; apparently the USA govt is trying to keep landlines alive and will give subsidies to the carriers who keep customers on it. It reduced my bill by $25, but I may still change completely over to another service if I can find one I like - ideal would be just internet since I live in the Los Angeles area and can get oodles of TV station over-the air.

As other said above, all the calls I get on the landline are telemarketers.

Seattle Forrest

Nope.

3alarmer 

.
...I have on as part of the cable TV/internet service bundle. There's somethin weird going on with it now where every time someone tries to call in, the phone goes dead and the internet drops out. Never had that particular problem with it before.

Kat12

Can you still get a "landline" that is an actual old-school land line rather than VOIP-based?

(It used to be that people would keep a landline so in case of emergency when cell service was out, the landline would still work. I assume that's probably moot if your "landline" needs your internet to be functional to, well, function...)

jon c. 

We still have a landline but the phone has been unplugged for a few years.

thook

We still have a landline and intend to keep it. Besides, the side of the mountain I'm on gets sh*t signal. It's funny 'cause one day, a few years ago, the FBI came out asking about some internet scam and our ISP routing number came up on it. Of couse, we had nothing to do with it, but they couldn't make any calls on the cells to verify anything until they left and got about 1/2 mile away.

clemsongirl 

I’ve never had a landline. I’ve always preferred to have the use of a phone elsewhere than just my residence and now especially for work purposes…my first phone was a Nokia 7110 when they first came out when i was 13. I’ve only had iPhones since they first came out (and a satellite phone for the past few years for emergencies and work/rides in the desert) and have been quite happy and satisfied with those!

canklecat

Nope. The advantages to a traditional landline vanished when the "phone company" switched from discrete infrastructure to VOIP. In ye olden dayes of yore if the electricity failed the phones still worked. No more. The "landline" phones now depend on electricity and a functioning modem/router or cable.

We did maintain the current semblance of a landline for years for my mom's sake. As her dementia worsened she couldn't remember how to use most devices that were invented after she was around age 20 or so. She could still remember how to manually change channels on a TV, but struggled with multiple remotes for the TV, DVD, etc. She could remember how to use a rotary dial phone but struggled with a touchtone phone -- so we got an old fashioned styled phone with a rotary shaped dial, but with buttons for the numbers. She could not remember at all how to use a cell phone or home computer, despite having used both only a few years earlier. She would carry a simple flip phone with only my backup number in memory -- when she went to the stores down the street she would often forget her purse, or would carry an empty purse with no wallet, debit card or cash, so she'd hand the phone to a clerk who would call me to come take care of things.

After mom died in 2018 I got rid of the home "landline" phone. It got nothing but spam, scam and wrong number calls anyway. I considered keeping it for voicemail, etc., but it wasn't even good at that. The cost was a terrible value compared with cell phone services, especially the many MVNOs that get discounted rates from the major players (Verizon, ATT, T-Mobile). It was easier to update my smart phone (from my old iPhone 4s) and use it for everything. No regrets.

nomadmax 

Not only do I not have a land line, my cell phone never gets answered. If you can't text or email it to me, I don't what to tell you. I hate talking on the phone.

Deal4Fuji

I still have a landline as part of the ISP package, but like others above all I receive is telemarketing calls. We should cancel it but it’s cheap and it’s my old phone # from way back before we all had cell phones. It’s primary function now is to locate cell phones 🙂

Bob Ross

"Use"? No. But I still have one.

Steve B.

Do I need one ?, no. Do I have 2 - Yes. Seems there's an emotional attachment to a number, My primary number that my wife and I have had for 30 years in 2 houses, as well as the 2nd number, dedicated to a fax machine that isn't hooked up, a number that was my now deceased mother-in-laws and my wife's home number growing up and that I now pay too much to Vonage to maintain as Verizon cannot transfer it to their system.

I'll admit that the primary landline does provide a better connection quality than my Verizon cell connection, which sucks in the house, even with WiFi calling.

I-Like-To-Bike

I transferred our primary land line phone number to a smartphone w/Tracfone plan. Eliminated the $40/month telephone company bill. Reduced the annoyance of robo calls and can now receive text messages on our home phone number.

The smartphone (LG Premier Pro LTE LML414DL) with a one year plan including data, texts, and minutes cost about $70 total from QVC. Renewal from Tracfone is about $100/year. Works fine off of wifi or can carry and use the phone anywhere in the U.S. and have access to my old home land line number.

mirfi

Juan,

I've worked in the 'Disaster Recovery' environment for 40 years(now retired from that). And know we can lose cell towers and/or the internet we can still depend on the copper wired line(hard line). Unfortunately no company will now support in my local area. Always considered it a backup.

Now we have the 'house phone' through the ISP "triple play" package.

We have had the same number for 40 years, so we keep it and use it whenever we need to give out a phone number, for applications, et al. Only friends and family get our cell numbers. So now it's a dumb answering machine as we've turned off the ringer due to people telling us our car warranty has run out. We do check the messages.

Nowadays if you want a communications backup to the cell phone, get a ham license. All pretty cheap. And simple.

bikecrate

I got rid of the landline years ago. I was just repainting parts of my house and took out the old phone jacks too.

dmark 

If your home is served by fiber no; if still in a copper area yes.

Steve B.

Verizon still has a local central land line switching building and I'm certain they have a lot of customers still connected using copper 28v systems. We are not, they put is fiber connection for TV, phone and internet. The phone connection in our basement has a rechargable battery that is required by state law to provide a landline connection if power is lost.

WilliamK1974

I still have a so-called landline, but it's a VOIP through the internet utility owned by the local electricity provider. I had residential phone service through AT&T until maybe 2011. It worked, but the call quality in my immediate vicinity was never that great. It was never able to support a DSL internet service. I'm not sure that AT&T still maintains the copper phone lines around here or not. There's been a big push to transplant everything onto fiber optic, which is great as long as nothing happens to the strands. The copper lines tended to be able to weather just about everything but tree branches falling on them. As long as there wasn't a break in the wire itself, the old landline phone service tended to be operational when everything else was down.

eofelis 

We have a Google Voice number and an Obi200 box hooked up to the modem and a home phone handset that we use as a home phone number. The GV number also rings through to my cell phone so I can see who calls when I'm out of the house.