Bobbielinks

I agree with Az Jane. I work in my basement and have a hearing disability. I can hear much better on my landline phone than I can on my cell phone. Also my cell phone often will not pick up the signal from an incoming call. When I want to use my cell phone I need to go outside, up to the SE corner of the deck to use it. We are located in a rural area with few towers. I could easily live without my cell phone and I fear the day landlines are done away with.

Stitchnripper

Yes -thanks. We have done that but that means keeping car running for a long time. An option for sure but with long time power outages and gas stations down have to balance needs.

romanojg

Landlines are refer to phones that are stationary phones, like in our house. Most of the times these days our home phones use electric due to all the great features, like extra extensions that only need an outlet to make them work. You can buy a phone that just plugs into the phone jack and takes no electric, then there are no battery backups needed.

romanojg

Yes, they can. As a matter of fact in most areas, if you have a cell phone but don't have service on it you can still use it to dial 911. Of course you still have to have it charged. A lot of people who don't want to have the bill but want the security of being able to call for assistance while driving get a used cell phone and keep it in their car. Old cell phones (working ones) can also be donated to womens shelters for the women who may need to call for emergency.

I also charge my cell in my car when needed but my car doesn't have to be running to charge. You should check because alot of cars are made like that now.

Onebyone

Our crank radio has a USB to charge our cell phones. No power needed.

Stitchnripper

Then you will pay the phone company, right? It isn't free to do that. But we have one of those simply because the power goes out enough where we are to make it worthwhile. We have one phone that plugs into the phone jack.

Stitchnripper

What kimd do you have. We have 2 and boy it takes a lot of cranking to get any charge. One must be in good shape to use that! I hope you can recommend an easier one.

sewingsuz

We keep our land line because it is tied into our security system. I put it on vacation once and rethought that action and quickly called them back.

romanojg

I'm not sure what part you are talking about. You have your basic service and x amount of jacks in your house. Here you aren't charged for the number of phones you use in your house just to have additional jacks installed if you need them. all of the phones I was talking about would be covered under your basic service. If you have the ones that have a base phone plus extra extensions you don't pay extra for them. They all plug into an electrical wall outlet and the extenstions pick up the signal from the main phone that is plugged into a jack. Like I have one main phone that is electric and it came with 4 extensions but I only need one phone jack to use it.

But yes, you have a basic fee and it increases depending on how many services you have added to it. For just service with no additional services like voice mail, caller id or forwarding you can pay around 20 a month. To me that's worth it.

Tothill

I have only read up to page 4.

Has anyone mentioned that cell phone conversations can be overheard with a scanner? With a land line the actual line has to be tapped.

My Dad bought a scanner to listen to marine radio traffic. He lives about 11 miles over water from Vancouver BC and could pick up all sorts of cell conversations.

Now I know some of you will say, you do not say anything on your phone that you should worry about, but that is not true. If you make plans to meet someone for lunch, you are telling the world your house is empty. If you call anywhere that you have to answer security questions you have just given away access to very private information. If you give out your credit card number to book a holiday, you have openly shared your CC number and that you will be away and how long.

I would love to have one less bill to pay. But for $25.00 per month for a good old fashioned land line, I have also have a secure means of communication.