lawman
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
Ooma.......$6/mth.....works great
I'm in Colorado and I pay centurylink $40/mo for a wired phone which mostly gets spam calls, plus mis line and other "fees".
On top of that I pay $15 for long distance. It used to be pay-by-the-minute and it would be $3-$6 a month but they changed to a minimum monthly fee with more "free" hours than I care to use.
So it seems like an easy $50-$60 savings a month. I used to not trust cells for 911 but it's now mandatory to do proper location reporting. It's still possible the cell tower would be down when good ol' copper is not. That's why one of my phone is the an old unpowered (well powered by the phone line) no frills phone.
I do get my internet from Centurylink, but comcast regularly comes knocking with a similar price point (around $80/mo) but supposedly higher speeds.
Everyone in the household has a cell phone (using Ting, about $40 for 3 phones, but I may look at Mint)
I do call overseas to reach some family for an hour a week, sometime they call, but the way their international calling is set up, they get a surcharge for calling a cell phone, so I would have to call them all the time (not a big deal)
Any of you guys still value a land line or am I a dinosaur?
Would adding a free VoiP provider be worth the trouble? Maybe for the international calling? I could use zoom and the like but my parents are technophobes and having a hard time switching a non-telephone system.
We pay $25/ cell line but YMMV. You really don’t have cell phones?
We ported our landline number to Ooma, have bought the premium service and are quite happy. Spam screening is spotty .... Voice mails and a 100% call log are available on the internet so that is handy when we are traveling. We have reasonable cell coverage at home but the Ooma VOIP calls are usually less troublesome.
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Ooma "Telo" basic boxes can be had on eBay for $20-30. There is a serial number on the bottom; you just sign into Ooma on the internet and enter that number to start the simple setup process.
My son went to visit a friend in Germany with no sim card and relying on Google Voice and Facebook calling for his communications. Free WIFI is everywhere over there and it worked for him. My daughter and her husband went to Japan and arranged to pick up a hotspot at the airport for their time there and that also worked great. I call my family overseas on Facebook and the quality is usually excellent and it's free. Even T-Mobile now defaults to WIFI calling as the preferred method using your minutes allocation.I highly endorse the free Google Voice option. It takes a few steps and a few days to get it set up, but then no more landline fees. I have mine ring to my cellphone, and it requires people to say their name, then it asks me if I want to accept the call. If they DON’T say a name, it just disconnects. Voicemail gets transcribed. I used my old landline number, and that’s what I give to businesses, keep cellphone number private.
You have options.
I have a free Google Voice number as my landline and use it all the time when I'm in the house. It rings to both my cellphone and the house wall phones. If you want to use it as a landline you need to buy a Polycom OBI200 Voip Adapter or if you just want it to ring to your cellphone, no extra equipment needed. After you buy the adapter there is nothing else to pay, it's totally free and I love it. I put $10 on Google back in 2012 for international calls to the UK and still have $4 left. I no longer use them for international calls, I call through Facebook app for free but here is a link to their rates
https://voice.google.com/u/0/rates
I also do the google voice using the OBI except I unplugged it and found I really don't miss it. The cell phones meet our needs. Itwas just a matter of getting use to it. I originally thought I needed that house phone, I liked the feel of the house phone better than the cell but I quickly got use to using the cell. I found this retro telephone handset that plugs into your cell phone on Amazon ($9), it gives you the feel of a house phone when using a cell. If you decide to get a google voice I recommend you have your current house phone number transferred (I think it is called ported to google, the phone companies chg around $20). The reason is assigned google number gets so much spam. Another good feature of the google system is it can convert a voice message to text and send it to your cell. Makes it easier to find that appt time or info. I hate listening to voice msgs on cell phone.
It's a phone that works even if "all circuits are busy" and it never has to be charged. It's very reliable.
I've never had and don't know anyone who has got the "all circuits are busy" message. My cell phone is just as reliable as a landline, but I don't have to be home to use it.
By the way landlines are known to have connection issues at times. They may be rare but they do exist.
I've never had and don't know anyone who has got the "all circuits are busy" message. My cell phone is just as reliable as a landline, but I don't have to be home to use it.
By the way landlines are known to have connection issues at times. They may be rare but they do exist.
After Katrina, neither land lines nor cell phones would connect reliably in this area. The idea of landlines being any more reliable than cell phones in an emergency is a complete joke to anyone who lived in New Orleans in 2005. I tried and tried to report to my work using both a landline in Alabama, and my cell phone, to no avail. My work (the US government, for goodness sake!) could not get in touch with me or anybody else via voice communication, although texting sometimes (not always) came through. At that time I was "anti-texting" so I had previously insisted on Verizon turning my texting off, and they did. When things were normal again I had it turned back on. E-mail also continued to work for some reason so the only way I could report to my work chain of command that I was safe, was by email to our HQ in DC.
Thanks everyone, I figured I'd provide an update and some thoughts.
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My work pays for my cell phone and the wife and kids are on Mint, so $15/month each.
Thanks everyone, I figured I'd provide an update and some thoughts.
I did get rid of the landline, par of the motivation to keep it was for emergencies, after all the other VoIP based solution wouldn't help if your Internet or power are down. But the Katrina related comments that it may not be more reliable convinvced me. I also don;t live in the boonies so redundancy is not that important.
I enabled international calling on my cell phone and I'd have to call a whole lot to get even close to what the landline cost before even long-distance costs.
I still have a phone line for my DSL, just not phone service, you don't need phone service to get DSL. I also called CenturyLink and told them I would quit if they couldn't match Comcast prices. they "did me a favor" and beat it by $5 although I'm guessing after taxes, etc... it's wash. I'm also leasing my new DSL modem which adds $15/mo but I plan on purchasing one now that I know the new DSL is table and delivers the advertized speed. Technically the DSL has lower bandwidth than cable, but my friends with Comcast say they don't get the top speeds during busy times.
So I cut my Centurylink bill from $140 (+$15 long distance) to $66/mo and doubled my DSL speed. Shoulda made that call years ago.
Not having a regular phone freed up space on the kitchen counter and my nightstand as a bonus!
My work pays for my cell phone and the wife and kids are on Mint, so $15/month each.