On Dec 3, 9:28 pm, Larry <no...@home.com> wrote:

<snip>

> I justify it by not having an AT&T landline at home, which I
> consider obsolete. I'll never figure why someone with a
> SELLphone they're paying so much for has another drain on their
> funds with a useless landline with even MORE stupid addon
> charges, like "long distance", a throwback into the 1930's.
>
> People are stupid.

You need to learn to look at the big picture. There are many reasons
to retain a landline that you don't understand.

1. DSL is generally much cheaper than broadband cable, and naked DSL
is usually no cheaper than a landline plus DSL.

2. Using a landline allows you to select a lower cost cellular plan
with fewer peak minutes. Usually the savings more than offset the cost
of the landline.

3. A landline is better for 911 service. You can achieve the same
results by registering a physical address on a service like Vonage or
Voicestick (but not with Skype), but these services can cost as much
as a standard landline and they require expensive broadband service
anyway. If you have kids or elderly people in the house then you don't
want to rely on a cell phone in an emergency.

4. In natural disasters, the cell phone network is often unavailable
because towers have been knocked out, or the system is unable to cope
with the capacity demands. Even a recent minor earthquake in
California caused capacity issues with all the carriers (the trick was
to set your phone to AMPS only, but this trick won't work for much
longer).

5. If you need to do FAXing, you can't do it with Vonage unless you
pay an extra fee. Faxing doesn't work with Voicestick most of the
time. One workaround to this is to use a PC faxing service, but these
can be somewhat of a pain in the butt to use, and they are not free
for sending. I use Faxaway on the occasions that I need to send a FAX
outside my LATA.

6. With a long distance service such as OneSuite, it's cheaper to make
international calls, without using up your peak cell phone minutes for
the call. You _never_ want to call internationally on your cell phone
(you can use OneSuite from your cell phone as well, but you're paying
twice if you're using peak minutes and having to get a plan with more
minutes).

7. Alarm systems often need a landline.

8. Satellite TV boxes need a landline, and satellite TV service is
much cheaper than cable TV service.

The important thing to remember with a landline is that you don't
really need all those stupid add-ons like 3 way calling, call-waiting,
caller-ID, voice-mail, etc. You can even go to measured-rate service
and save more.