U.S. Cell-Only Households Keep Climbing

[Pete Paxton]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://tech.yahoo.com/news/nm/20081217/tc_nm/us_wireless_polls_1' target='_blank'>http://tech.yahoo.com/news/nm/20081...ireless_polls_1</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"Nearly 18 percent of households in the United States have no traditional telephone and rely on wireless services only, which is up several percentage points from a year earlier, the government said on Wednesday.&nbsp;In the first half of 2008, 17.5 percent of households were wireless only, up from 13.6 percent a full year earlier, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention."</em></p><p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/spt/auto/1229572795.usr11642.jpg" style="border: 1px solid #d2d2bb;" /></p><p>Here at my place AT&amp;T is about worthless so I'm stuck with a landline. I have to admit though if I had reliable coverage here at home, I'd probably get rid of my landline. So of course I'm curious to know, how many of you have ditched your landline service in&nbsp;leu&nbsp;of a wireless service? Are there any of you who have no plans to get rid of your landline no matter what the reason?</p>

[ddwire]

Pete, ditch At&T and go with Sprint or Verizon.

I have not totally gotten rid of my land line, have only used it for faxes since 1999. My office is at home so if I could fax from my Sprint TReo I would get rid of the land line. My land line is not relly a land line as I switched to Vonage three years ago.

Vonage is hard to beat with unlimited calling the ability to take phone any place that has high speed internet, no long distance and cheap int. rates if you need them.
Out here in the midwest Att&T cell service is a good as no phone at all, I laugh every time I see one of the comercials talking about more bars..

[doc]

does using MagicJack (http://www.magicjack.com) count as ditching a landline? If so I ditched them 2 years ago.

For $20/year I'm not complaining. Now they're offering $59 for 5 years...sweeet!

[vr6t]

We haven't had a landline in over 8 years. Been lucky that ATT (and previously Verizon) have good coverage in my area. And really, we haven't missed it...except on rare occasions when our coverage intermittently becomes spotty.

The only downside is that I do occasionally get a telemarketing call. I think the problem stems from on-line forms that require a "home" phone number, so the mobile has gotten on some bad lists...

[Stinger]

I can't get cable in my area so I have no choice but to keep my landline for my ADSL connection. It's annoying because my it bumps up the price of my broadband connection from $27 to $42.

The only time I use the landline is when I want to order a pizza. It's easier for them to look-up my address from my number than for me to say it over the phone.

[joelevi]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://tech.yahoo.com/news/nm/20081217/tc_nm/us_wireless_polls_1' target='_blank'>http://tech.yahoo.com/news/nm/20081...ireless_polls_1</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"Nearly 18 percent of households in the United States have no traditional telephone and rely on wireless services only, [...] </p>

I couldn't help but notice the "and" in the headline... I'm one of the many that have "no traditional telephone" as I'm using a VoIP service (first Vonage, now T-Mobile @Home, and Les.net in the future).

I pay around $10/month for my T-Mobile VoIP line, which lets my small children still be able to make emergency calls if need be, but doesn't cost $60/month like a "traditional" phone line does.

- www.JoeLevi.com

[John London]

No way can I change to wireless only, unless I want to pay big $$$. To many calls on the landline that would wipe out my minutes. Although I have to admit the T-mobile wi-fi phone could be a possibility. I also have Vonage and it is hard to go wireless with cheap access. Could get it even cheaper since T-mobile has a $10 VoIP line (just a lack of features right now). So, no on wireless only, my family is a combination and will be until the wireless carriers get the prices down.

[doughboy]

We ditched our landline in early 2001. The accommodations made were few but included:

* needing to purchase an updated cell phone so we could obtain reliable service when we relocated.
* several arguments with my wife about excessive minutes use (anyone else ever had such an argument or is it just me?).

The way I look at it, we were paying $26 per month (including fees & taxes) just to have a landline with local capability in 2001. I was able to add a 2nd phone to our cell account for $35 per month that included long distance and great portability.

[hazcaddy]

As a lifelong emergency responder, I just want to remind y'all that when the power goes out, any landline that doesn't have a corded phone on it will be out of action.

Anyone with just a cellphone, no landline (hardwired or not) will have communications until their phone runs out of juice - then you're toast.

Some folks in NOLA found that out the hard way.

[buckyg]

I'm with hazcaddy. We seem to get at least one ice/winter storm a year with a power outage. Sometimes we also get brief thunderstorm-related outages in the summer. If the outage goes long enough, folks have noticed that their cell phones are suddenly not so reliable...

If it weren't for that, yeah, it sure would be nice to lose the landline and gain some $

[kerrins]

I've been ready to ditch the land line for years. My wife needed a land line to receive faxes from work but they have since started to email those documents. I installed an Xlink and it works fine with our phones. My wife required that we would still have regular handsets located throughout the house instead of having to find the mobile phone by the charging station. Now the only thing I'm waiting on is for her to formally announce to friends and family that the only way to reach us is to call our mobiles.

[encece]

Cell only for about 2-1/2 years now. NEVER used my home phone and dont want a VOIP phone. Dont most people have plugged in wireless home phones today that wouldnt work in a power outage anyway? Looks for one of those wind up phone chargers so when power goes out...I can exercise too....remembering that I'm saving a ton of wasted money by not having a home landline phone.

[buckyg]

Yeah, there's ways to power your cell phone. But if I remember correctly from our last major ice storm power outage, some cell towers lost power after awhile also.

[dh]

We've not had landline for many years.

Currently all three of us have iPhones and couln't be happier - especially since 3g finally arrived on ATT in our area.

For sure this isn't the cheapest option but my wife and I both have two businesses and this has proven to be a great way to help manage everything.

[Down8]

I have been cell-only since... 1998 or 1999.

However, I just got a landline. I bought a new house, and the alarm requires phone service, of course. So, aside from the $33/mo for the alarm, I have to pay $13/mo for basic AT&T landline service.

And now I once again deal with repeated wrong numbers - from pain-in-the-rear bill collectors, no less.

Cell-only is the way to go, whenever possible.

-bZj

[mtnmedic]

While I remember when cell phones didn't exist and the fact that I really do appreciate them tremendously, I have always had and probably always will have (until something truly better comes along) a landline phone. For one simple reason: landline phones - and I'm talking about TRADITIONAL phones that are solely connected to the phone jack and nothing else - have rarely EVER gone out of service on me for any significant length of time, no matter what the situation throughout my life. It's one of the few technologies I can count on almost 100% of the time. Sure landline phones rely on electricity like everything else but their power source is deep-seated in the infrastructure so it's harder to knock out. Cell phones are battery-powered, requiring an AC connection at some point. And they rely on cell towers that also can get knocked out during a power outage although it's not so easy to do any more given the modern-day backup systems in place.

[Pony99CA]

Maybe if I were single, using only a cell phone would be fine. However, if you have a family, I think there's a real benefit to having a number that reaches your whole house, not just one member of the house.

Then there are the emergency scenarios already mentioned where you lose power and your cell phone dies.

I pay about $37 per month for a full-service landline (multiple features, including Caller ID, call forwarding, etc.). We use our cell phones for long distance calls (except for faxes). If the family goes on vacation, I forward the landline to my cell phone, so I won't miss calls to the house.

Yes, we get telemarketers but that's what the Do Not Call list is for. For those that still call, we either just ignore them (using Caller ID) or figure out how to say "I'm not interested".

Steve

[kdarling]

The stats show that people over 40-50 still keep their landlines. Age brings wisdom? Or just inertia?

In any case, a landline is worth its weight in gold at times. When we had that long blackout here in the Northeast a few years ago, it didn't take long for the cell towers to become saturated with calls... and then have their backup power fail after about 6-12 hours. Ooops, no more cell phones!

We had the only landline in the neighborhood that also still had a regular non-wireless (Princess) phone attached. After a while, sheepish young cell-bound (or wireless handset) neighbors came knocking, to ask if they could use our phone.

[kerrins]

Maybe if I were single, using only a cell phone would be fine. However, if you have a family, I think there's a real benefit to having a number that reaches your whole house, not just one member of the house.

Steve

I'm not sure I understand the distinction of a family vs a single person. If the family has a different mobile number for each person, that is the number the caller will use. If you use Xlink, then all the phones in the house will still ring and will a little extra effort you can have a distinct ring depending on who the caller is trying to reach.

[Pony99CA]

I'm not sure I understand the distinction of a family vs a single person. If the family has a different mobile number for each person, that is the number the caller will use.
Cell phones are for individuals. Landlines are (generally) for homes. If somebody (say my daughter's school) wants to reach anybody in the home, they have one number that does that.

With a cell phone, they'd be at the mercy of whether the person whose number they had had a live battery (my daughter regularly forgets to charge her phone :mad:), the phone turned on, had it where they could hear it ring (I almost always keep my Motorola Q9m with me, but my wife leaves her cell phone in her purse -- not very good if she's at the other end of the house), etc. Some of those issues apply to cordless phones or if you only have one extension, but phones are so cheap now that having one extension is silly (even if you only have one jack, you can plug a multi-handset cordless phone into it).

Even if they get through to one person, that doesn't help the other people in the house. If it's something they'd be interested in, they have to hope the person who took the call thinks to tell them. With a landline, I just look at the Caller ID to see who called and ask about the calls that aren't obvious.

If you use Xlink, then all the phones in the house will still ring and will a little extra effort you can have a distinct ring depending on who the caller is trying to reach.
By Xlink, I assume you mean the XLink Gateway (http://www.xlinkgateway.com/). I hadn't heard of Xlink before, but I'm not sure I'd spend $130 for that (especially if I had a family of four or more). Plus, unless it's a Class I Bluetooth device, it's limited to about 30 feet.

Steve

P.S. Pet peeve alert -- If you mention something that's not universally known (such as Google), link to it. Don't make people guess a URL (xlink.com is something about terminal emulators) or search and have to pick through the results. The little extra time you spend providing a link can save many people that much time or more.

The XLink Gateway Web site violates that rule. They say to read reviews at a couple of sites, but don't give links to the reviews, only the URLs of the sites. Good idea -- make interested people search more. :rolleyes: