October 23, 2008
Are Landlines Officially Antiques?
Only a handful of people I know still have landlines at home. It's especially marked among people under 30, those of us who moved to the city and into a group house soon after college at a time when cell phones were basically mandatory. Maybe we've moved into nicer places since then, but who needs a landline? It's just an extra expense that seems increasingly redundant.
But what about in the office? D.C. Wire reports that City Administrator Dan Tangherlini's office is acting as a guinea pig for the D.C. government to see if it makes sense to stop paying for landlines at city workers' desks. The theory is that if all employees already have cell phones and are often out of the office working on problems, paying for landlines is wasteful. It makes a lot of sense, and it would be pretty interesting if the city converted to only a handful of essential landlines. Then again, we can imagine a lot of city workers claiming their phone had died or they were in an area where they couldn't get any service whenever they wanted to slack off. Make sure your employees have extra batteries, Mr. Tangherlini.
Photo by staceyviera
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I have a landline at home, kind of. I have vonage because I live in a basement and AT&T doesn't rock the service in basements.
However, voange is awesome! Unlimited minutes and free calls to all sorts of far away places.
It's pretty great considering the alternatives...
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But if you don't have a landline, then you won't come home from work every day to find, on your voicemail, a message that begins..
"Hello, I'm Michael Brown..."
Does this guy seriously think he needs to send out a daily robocall to get elected?
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I have a landline at home mainly because it was part of a package deal from Verizon and it would've been almost as expensive for just the DSL alone.
I do like the idea of having a landline "just in case." But also, I save a lot on my cellphone by having a lower minutes plan. I use my cell to call long distance or to basically say "Hey, we'll be there in 10 minutes, bye." and my actual landline to have lengthier conversations. If you're a "talker" (ie, someone who can't put their phone down while on the metro), then maybe not having a landline make sense financially since you can't bloody function without that damn thing to your ear.
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I would hate trading a landline at work for a work cell. I'd be at work 24/7 then, and it would be horrible. Just ask anyone on the Hill what THAT kind of life is like...
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I use my cell to text "Hey, we'll be there in 10 minutes" and rarely use the minutes plan.
More often, I find that I'm not phoning people, just texting, tweeting, and emailing. When I do phone friends/family, they text me back asking what I was calling about. Maybe I should get rid of the landlines...
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The poll misses an obvious category, "Have a landline at home because roommate insists on it, even though I only use it every thee months or so, to call my cellphone when it's under a pile of laundry or stuck in the couch cushions."
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I have a landline at home because a) I need it to buzz people in to my building and b) I don't get amazing service in my apartment, so if I need to be on an extended call (for work especially, as I work from home a day or two a week) it's nice to have a landline that won't unexpectedly drop my call. However, in my old apartment my cell got fine service and there wasn't a buzz-in feature in my building, so I went without a landline.
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Problem 1- Cell phone call quality still falls far behind land lines.
Problem 2 - The cancer issue. Maybe they do, maybe they don't; but if it turns out that they do, and their is mounting evidence that is pointing so, the cell phone switch could put the city in a very costly litigation situation in the future.
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I'm with demonfafa and ustreetgirl. It's like an extra $5 for a landline with DSL, and if working from home, it's nice to be able to have people call you without using my minutes.
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i have a landline at home, only because it basically came for nothing along with the DSL (would have opted for cable modem, but comcast seems to believe that bloomingdale isn't real, and is only a magical fantasy land that i made up).
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We get horrible cell phone reception in my office, so landlines are still necessary there.
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I like that the landline keeps me in my chair fully listening to the person I'm speaking with. Whenever I get calls on my cell I tend to multitask and so I'm probably not hearing 100% of what they're saying (not to mention the sound quality issues with my cell).
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The theory is that if all employees already have cell phones and are often out of the office working on problems, paying for landlines is wasteful.
If DC employees weren't answering the phone when they were at their desks, what makes you think they'll answer calls to their cellphones?
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Look, when the morlocks attack the electrical grid is going down and if you don't have a landline, no one will hear you scream. Maybe!
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We wanted to drop the home landline - but we have a home alarm system that only works if it can call into the center. Odd that no one else has mentioned this. Do folks not have alarm systems? Anyhow, as yet the wireless options for the alarm system require a complete retrofit of the system, so I'm waiting for someone to get smart and just sell me some nifty wireless router for the existing system at half the cost.
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My company has already done away with landlines and everyone uses the BBry for everything- it works well, and makes more sense. Desks are almost obsolete now too, except as a place to keep family photos and a sad plant.
On thing people often forget about land lines is they are supposed to be there whenever you need them. If the power goes out for an extended time, the cell phone dies, land line does not. If reception is bad for some reason, or cell networks jammed up- the land line should work. (this being DC, and seeing as my land line is dangling from an old log running into a hole in the back of my house- I doubt this)
Having DSL at home, the land line lives on, but I unplugged the last phone connected to it over a year ago and haven't missed it.
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I still have an old school copper line that comes to my crib in DC via Verizon, and we got a landline with our cable internet out here in Fargo too. I had to get a landline here 'cause cell reception is kind of spotty and I have weekly phone meetings and whatnot.
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I'm not too concerned about cancer, but I agree with RJ that cell service just isn't good enough yet for me to give up landlines entirely.
In my giant government office building, cell reception is basically zero. And you can't even bring a cell phone into some offices because of security concerns.
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That's a good point. When I lived in DC the house I was renting had an alarm system and I wanted to activate it, but my roommate and I were not willing to pay for a landline in addition to the alarm service. Since there were bars on all the windows and we always locked everything, we decided to take our chances without one. We regretted that decision later when we got burglarized.
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If it weren't for landlines, lots of folks wouldn't have been able to get in touch with friends and family on September 11 'cause the wireless system was beyond overloaded. Heaven forbid something like Sept. 11 happen again, but...
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No landline and haven't had one in a year. Discontinued the one at the group house when we all realized we were paying $10 a month for something we weren't using. Would love a work cell because it means I could occasionally work for home except I have work specific software.
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I won't give up my landline. We use it all the time.
I hate using the speakerphone on my cell phone. It sucks. But my husband and I use the speaker phone on our landline all the time. It works great and we get unlimited free long distance. Calling the family works much better this way, especially with a baby who grandma wants to talk to over the phone.
Plus, you know, the whole emergency situation thing....
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I think we'll see an uptick of landlines once Fios starts rolling out.
Personally I keep a vonage land line at home just because I don't get great cell phone service all through my apartment and it's a DC number (my cell still has a 703 area code from my days as an Arlington resident).
I also like not having to dial area codes when I call another DC number. It's fee;s like being a historic recreationist.
As for work, I would not want to use a cell phone all day. For one thing, cell phones don't feedback your voice into the earpiece. So you get this disconcerting feeling that they can't hear you (and may explain why people talk so loudly on cell phones).
Plus, call forwarding, etc. is probably a lot more of a pain in the ass with a cell phone.
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re: alarm system
i just got an alarm system that uses cell phone towers or something ... cost a bit extra though
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Gotta have a landline. How else can I get my four robo-calls each day from Michael Brown?
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Maybe we've moved into nicer places since then, but who needs a landline?
- People whose cellphones don't work in their homes.
- People who'd like to be able to make a 911 call when the house is on fire without worrying about reception, battery life, number of bars, or whether they remembered to replenish their pay-as-you-go minutes the night before.
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Power and reception aside, you can make a 911 call from any cellphone, no matter what your billing status is.
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I have a landline for the DSL. It comes in handy for those customer service calls when you know you're going to be on hold for 45 minutes. Other than that, I hardly use it and the most of the calls I get are automated sales calls.
Besides the emergency 911 call, another advantage of the landline is having a number to give people when you know it'll be passed on to someone else. So if I'm signing up for something, or ordering something, I give them the landline. Keeps me from getting telemarketing calls on the landline, and to stop from getting odd looks if I give an out of state cell number at the dentist/dry cleaners/pizza place/etc.
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I should say... telemarking calls on the cell phone.
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Not having a land line at work is awful. I know because I don't have one. I also don't have separate cell phones, so it makes life even more complicated (before some smart ass tells me to get a real job or go get a cell phone I provide the caveat that I work for the government in North Africa, so I can't go getting myself another cell line without waiting five months for the service to kick in). The two worst bits? 1. You cant use a secretary for anything and, 2. Work never stops. The second part is especially bad for me because I'm +6 hours to Washington, so as people are just settling in to their routine, I'm taking off.
I'm no Luddite. When in the US I'm fine with my Hulu vice cable and all of the whiz-bang gadgets that make you smile, but I would literally murder (someone insignificant) for land lines in the office.
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wow, oldnamewontwinusernameoftheweek, that's one hell of a testimony for a landline. we should start up a collection for you!
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@ustreetgirl
Lots of apartments that have that buzz-in feature do allow you to use a cell phone for it. I have mine hooked up that way now, and a bunch of buildings that I looked at to rent in also had the same feature.
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The Michael Brown robocalls have got to stop. I think I'm up to about eight now.
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i've never heard one of the michael brown calls. guess since my landline has no answering machine i miss out on them. would love to talk to one of his people (a real person) and let them know how much they are reviled.
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I once worked as a contractor and my bosses could not get it into their heads that no, I did not have a land line. Nor do I want to spare the expense or time to install a landline just to call into our conference calls.
Currently I have my personal cell, work bb/cell and an office landline. I would be more than happy to lose my landline, but then again no one calls my work bb, they just e-mail.
How many of you no longer listen to voicemails? I haven't listened to my voicemails in over a month.
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123abc: yeah I know they do, but not for the area code my cell phone is, only 202, 703, or 301 for my building at least. I got a Massachusetts area code on my cell (and didn't feel like going through the hassle to change my number). Plus, I don't really like the idea of buzzing someone into my building when I'm not physically there.
I have never gotten a Michael Brown robocall either, and I have voicemail...
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i do notice that people are using voicemail less and less and using texting to do that kind of communicating
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As long as there is rural America, there will be landlines. The FCC wouldn't stand for it otherwise. And I'll still have a job. (Telecommunications Consultant, in case you were wondering.)
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mentalcharmer: but look at some 'third-world' countries—since they never built land-line infrastructure, they've skipped straight to mobile phones for communication. there are sub-saharan african countries with a higher percentage of mobile phone usage than the united states! not they we should give up our entire built infrastructure, but there's precedent that shows our way of doing things wasn't absolutely necessary.
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Maybe someone already commented on this, but to me, Vonage is not the same as a landline. Landlines are more reliable than Vonage UNLESS you live someplace where the phone wires are threaded precariously through trees - Maryland or rural Massachusetts come to mind - but in that case your power and cable would flicker all the time too.
For quality, though, landlines are much better - T-mobile coverage (for those of you with government blackberries) sucks in a lot of places.
That said, I haven't had a landline in years. In the city where cable is pretty reliable (compared to rural or suburban areas where the wires aren't buried) it isn't necessary. But as for rural areas...yes, the phone companies will run a phone line down a 5-mile road to just one house, but the cell companies are extremely unlikely to build another tower just to guarantee coverage in that area. If the cell companies were required to provide coverage in rural areas (and received federal subsidies to do so), would landlines be phased out?