We have a land line with Verizon. We tend to lose our power a lot during storms so we have 2 phones with the cords and the other phones are cordless. The cordless phones don't work when the power goes out neither does our cable TV. Is it different if you have the phone hooked up to cable? We're kind of old school and not attached to our cell phones like a lot of people. All of our friends and family of our generation still have land lines while most from my daughter's generation, she's 30, do not. Cell phones are cheaper for sure, but not worth much if you forget to keep them on and the battery charged. LOL.

Yes, we do. We use Vonage, though we've had some issues and are not sure if it's our cable or them.

Neither of us want annoying calls coming only to our cell phones throughout the day.

We only have cell phones for personal calls but I work at home and need a land line for business. Otherwise, we would only have cell phones. Before we got rid of our personal land line the only people that called it would be telemarketers and my mom.

Landlines. For one thing, I can't imagine having to carry a cell on my body at all times. I may not even hear it ring if I'm in the back of the house.

Landlines are easier to talk on while writing. I can always tell when someone calls from their cell, half the time I'm saying, "What?" lol

Convenient and comfy.

We've got both. Our alarm system is tied in through our landline. I do not want to give that up. My husband uses his cell alot for business also, but otherwise we are choosey about who we give our cell numbers to. I am one that does not want to be chained to my phone. I am guilty of keeping my cell on silent alot. LOL

tina

Our home phone is through Charter cable (where we get cable, internet and phone). So we have a home phone in addition to our cells, but it's not a traditional "land line."

I used to have an AT&T land line when I worked from home, but in the two years since I left that job we haven't missed it. In fact, we recently considered dropping the Charter phone, but when we priced our Charter services a la carte, we wouldn't save more than about $5 by dropping it. So we kept it.

Both.

Won't give up my land line--the power goes out now and then, and I have Techshield in my attic and it interferes with cell phone reception, so I need a land line.

I don't like talking on the cell phone anyway, AT&T seems to drop every call at least once before my conversation is finished.

My cell phone number is only give to a few people; I do not like to chat when I'm out and about running errands.

We have kept our landline. Our cell phones are of the pre-paid variety because we use them so little and Dhs mother would eat up a big chunk of his minutes when she calls. I like having the option of the land-line in case of a power outage too. Generally I abhor the telephone. I am not chatty and I hate the sound of the phone ripping through my peace and quiet to end up stuck listening for 45 minutes to jibber jabber.

I have a land line as part of my cable package. As a PP mentioned, getting rid of it wouldn't save much money at all.

Mostly I keep it because I have a boss who likes to call people at home on evenings and weekends. My boss doesn't know I have a cell phone--there is no way I'm dealing with work questions all weekend. He may be a workaholic, but I am not. Since he can't call my cell, he calls the landline and has to leave a message, which I can respond to (or not) when I choose. Besides, my cell is a very cheap pre-paid plan with limited minutes that is for *me* when I have an emergency; not for other people to chat to me on.

We do not have a landline. As a matter of fact, we moved to our new house back in January and I don't even know where the phone jacks are!

I don't keep my cell phone on my person at all times. When I'm home, it's usually sitting on the kitchen counter and in essence becomes a cordless phone anyway. I also have a little "battery pack" that holds a charge (maybe not indefinitely, but for a significant amount of time) so if I forget to charge my cell and the battery does run out, I can plug in the battery pack until the phone is charged again. Good for emergencies. Luckily, we don't have any problems with reception where I live.

Works for us, anyway.

I'm keeping my landline. I've had the same number for 38 years and just can't give it up. The last four digits of my mom's number have been the same for 62 years!

Reception of the cell phone varies. I also like having extensions around the house. If the cell phone is downstairs and I am up, I don;t want to be running looking for it.

I also can clamp my landline phone between my ear and shoulder, and I can't do that with the cell. Yes, I know about the hands free function, but it's not the same.

Both of my sons only have cell phones. I think they have learned to always keep them close by. I agree -- it's generational!

One positive about using a landline, is I don't have to put my glasses on to read the numbers when I make a call.

We still have a land line, bundled with our cable package, with the added benefit over the traditional phone company of free nationwide and Canadian long distance. I like having the landline for all the reasons others have mentioned. I have several extensions throughout the house and can hear it ring and pick it up easily, better reception, we have had the number for almost 20 years, etc.

We have a land line because we have to always have a backup phone available. And we have a corded phone, just in case :)

I rarely use my cell. Would never get rid of the land line. Have one corded and 3 cordless phones in the house and garden shed.

I have horrible cell reception at my home so I have to keep the landline. I probably would anyway because I hate talking to people on their cell. Half the time they can't hear me, the other half of the time, I can't hear them...LOL!

Gosh, I live fairly rural but have no problem with dropped calls or reception on my cell.

I tend to text more on my cell than talk. LOL

We also have a corded phone - in the garage. In case of power outage. . .

Tishtoshnm: I think we were separated at birth!
Ditto, ditto to everything you said.

I have a landline and a prepaid cell, but most of the time the cell is not turned on. Somehow my sisters and a few others who have the cell can't get it through their heads that it's prepaid! That I'm paying for each minute of "What's going on? I'm going to the store today. Not sure what I'm going to make for dinner. Yickety, Yack."

I've kept a corded phone in the house for outages, too, (my main phone's part of an answering machine) but a FiOS installer comes next week, so that corded phone will do me no good after that -- it won't work with FiOs lines. The phone company does install a battery backup that will last a few hours, but beyond that I'll have to hope I charged up my cell if the power goes out.

Pammyfay, ask the FiOS installer to show you how to turn the battery back-up for the phone off and on. The back-up only lasts for a few hours without power. So you need to turn it off when the power goes out. Then you can turn it on to make a call and turn it off again. It will last for a few days if you treat it right.

Just make sure they install the back-up in a fairly easy to get to place. Mine was installed on the stairs from the basement to the back yard, a couple of feet higher than my head and where no light will ever shine.

It must have been easy for the installer to put it there, but every trouble-shooting phone call I had started with, "Can you tell me what lights are on, on the back-up unit?" Which led to balancing on my tip-toes on the stairs, a flashlight clenched in my teeth.

Camlan-- I will definitely print this out and circle your suggestion so I'll remember to talk to the installer about the location! Thanks!

Timely subject for me. I plan to discontinue our hard line house phone in favor of our cells.

DH is self-employed, and his office is in our home. We previously needed to keep a hard line phone number in order to receive DSL service provided by our ISP which supports our business internet & business phones. Our ISP has begun to switch its business customers to a broadband signal, so we will finally be able to say goodbye to the "house" phone. Eliminating the house phone will produce a savings of approximately $700 per year.

The house phone is primarily a PIA, as the lion's share of calls received are of the telemarketing/other solicitation-type calls. Basically, there are only 2 incoming calls that the house phone supports that I actually want to receive ~ calls from DM and MIL. Everyone else we know has gone with cell service only, and those people call us on our cells. Haven't heard any complaints.

However, my DM is having a hard time processing the fact that we won't have a traditional phone line. She's had a landline forever, so you can imagine the number of questions she had when I told her I am going to cancel the landline as soon as the business service is provisioned. "How will anyone get in touch with you?" "What if they don't know your cell number?" Well, in reality, most everyone I would want to talk with already has my cell number, and their call is coming from a cell.

We have Verizon cell service ~ the only cell phone provider that affords us a consistent cell signal, and the ability to use our cells in our home. No dropped calls despite where our home is situated (former carriers failed to receive a reliable signal within our home). That is a huge issue with regard to safety, since we previously couldn't rely on the cell signal.

The hardline phone really isn't safer in an emergency. In the event the power goes out, so goes the phone, etc. From a safety standpoint, our cells are actually the safest option in case of an emergency.

I am confident that I won't at all miss the unwanted solicitation calls that seem to constantly interrupt our dinner/early evening.

Oops -- forgot to mention this in my first reply.

A couple months ago, Verizon started requiring customers who had either DSL or were changing their Internet service (like upgrading) to also have landline service -- bundling. Plus Verizon keeps bombarding DSL customers (like me) with "special offers" to switch to Fios (obv in Fios-wired areas), to get them off the copper phone lines, which it says are harder to maintain (I don't agree with that but whatever).

So new customers may not have a choice whether to have a landline or not.

We have a land line w/two instruments, one in the our farm office and one in the kitchen. The only one with the ringer turned on is in the office, so if you're trying to call me at home, I'm not going to hear it. Once every day or so, I look at the caller ID and play the answering machine's messages.

My DH has a cell which is on when he's away from home. I have a cell but it often stays in the drawer for months at a time. I only take it with me when I'm traveling far from home, not on short trips in my area.

I don't really get why we all have to be connected by phone 24/7.

OTOH we have two Verizon wireless modems that run our computers and those puppies are on all the time!

L.

I recently got rid of my land line when I dumped most of my Comcast service. Rarely did we ever get a call from anyone we knew on the home phone. More and more people would call our cell phones. As long as I had the Comcast bundle there was no advantage to dumping the phone but once I got rid of the bundle there was no benefit in keeping the phone.

I did add another cheap cell phone to our AT&T family plan so I could keep my home phone number in case anyone I know ever called. And also for those parties I don't want to give my cell phone number to. I have it on the kitchen counter on high volume so I can hear it any where. Of course it's never anyone I know calling so doesn't really matter if I get to it in time or not.

My land line has become like my USPS mailbox - nothing of any value ever shows up in either place.

We dumped our landline a couple months ago and went with Ooma. We paid 179.00 for the machine and only pay a couple of dollars a month in taxes. I learned about it here from one of the posters and it's worked out pretty well. We had the Comcast service a couple of years ago and it didn't work any better than Ooma does (because they're both voip) but Ooma is basically free! It also had all the services I wanted too. Voicemail, caller id and an option for low cost international calling.

Here is a link that might be useful: Ooma, free voip.

I am looking for technology solutions. Now that 4G is available where I live (boonies), I am ready to ditch my land line and possibly my satellite internet. AT&T offers a great wireless gateway that will allow me to port my home number to my wireless AND connect my cordless phones to it. BUT...

How do I handle my telephone connection to my Dishnet receiver? Do I really need that - do they use it to call my receiver or is it just to purchase movies?

How can I handle my remote gate entry call box? The landline runs through my gate box so that when people press the call box, it rings on my cordless phone and I can buzz them in.

How do I handle the alarm system: I am looking at an interface box that would allow me to use the Internet to send alarms instead of land lines. I have satellite internet but can now get high speed internet on my iPhone over a 4G network. The problem with the cell phone approach is that if I am away from the house with my phone, there would ne no alam system connection to the internet. Could I just buy a hot spot device and leave it in the house all the time?

Thanks for the help

As many have said, we keep a land line with an analog phone incase of power outages when a digital/cordless phone would be useless. After that terrible snowstorm we experienced here in the northeast a few years ago, I think we'll always have a land line. It was our only link to the outside world. Cable was out and none of the cell towers worked either. If we had our phone through cable or depended on our cells, we would have been out of luck!

I'm with those of you that are not ready to dump the land line just yet (although those REALLY ANNOYING Robo calls, etc. tempt me now and then to dump it). We often use our cells to make long distance calls, but when we want really clear reception, we use the land line -- calls never get dropped with a land line and the 911 locator isn't an issue.
I want to mention something to all of you who have dropped your land line. Have you checked your pets' collar ID and/or chip to make sure the appropriate phone number is still identified? I had a situation yesterday when we found a little stray dog in our yard with id tags, but the number had been discontinued. It worked out for the dog eventually, but it made me think about how many people may have overlooked their own pet tags after dropping their land lines.

We dropped ours a few months ago, no regrets. We do have dsl so if we wanted, we could easily turn it back on again.
I don't care if I miss a call, I'll call them back. But, now, I only have to carry around one phone about the house and yard instead of two and not keep up with the house phone that nobody called except dr. appointment reminders.

We got rid of our land line over seven years ago. Have not missed it one little bit.

I have a cell for comms & internet--no landline, DSL or fibre in my area which is rather rural/remote.

Did anyone hear the NPR story about this contest? It was a competition to come up with technology to block robot calls; NPR interviewed the winner and I cannot WAIT for this to be available. I hope the kid makes a gazillion dollars. Too bad the illegal robot callers (bypassing the do not call list) can't be forced to pay for it for those they target.

Here is a link that might be useful: Stop Robot Calls contest