Land Lines… Do You Still Have One?

Posted by Randomguru | Filed under Zen Musings

Question: In this modern age where practically everyone (even in the poorest third world countries) owns a cellphone… do YOU still own a “land line”?

I’ve been asking various people I know, and I’m finding out that more and more people are ditching their land lines because of the redundancy of owning both a standard “land line” phone and a cellphone. Added to this, the fact that in many families like my own, everyone has a cellphone. My two boys, ages 15 and 19, have their own cellphones.

So, if my wife, my two boys and I all have cellphones, what’s the point in owning the land line?

And, with more options out there such as email, instant messaging, and texting, it just makes it more and more obsolete to have the old land line. In addition, I’m slow with this, but more people are opting to communicate with phones via the internet. Granted, I’m a bit slow getting into this possibility, but I am now doing all my research and am intent on investigating all the possibilities in saving on my overall phone expenses.

Just the other day, I found out that my youngest son had been texting way more than usual, and a couple of months ago he racked up $50 of text messages alone. That’s like, a dozen Venti Lattes at your local Starbucks, but still, money is money and it’s important (with the gasoline prices now around $4.00 per gallon and more) to save as much of that money as possible.

Anyway, one of my current goals is to explore all avenues of communication and come up with ways to save money and adopt ways to communicate better and more efficiently with my family and friends. So, if you have any thoughts and ideas, or ways in which you better communicate with your friends and family, while saving money, please let me know….



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Comments (View Comments) | April 24th, 2008

  • tokyorose: thanks for recommending jajah! will definitely check it out.

    one of the problems with the land line is that some relatives call us from the Philippines and the call gets charged to us automatically. over $130 in long distances calls this month. so, definitely need to figure something out. thank you.
  • do you use skype or jajah at all, carlos? those two go a long way in cutting down my phone bill...i especially like jajah becos the call is transferred to your landline (or mobile, if your country is in the right zone), so the sound quality is the same as a regular call, while being absolutely free. check it out:

    http://jajah.com
  • what type of headset do you use with your computer?
  • we still have one, but we are getting rid of it soon for the same reasons you just mentioned.

    it's amazing how much we spend on services we don't really need. i don't need 300 minutes a month for my cellphone. My calls usually last about 1 minute and I don't call people that often. I use facebook, email, and instant messenger to contact my friends & family 99% of the time. If I wasn't scared that I'd run out of minutes in an emergency, I'd make the switch to prepaid.
  • Pat: did i congratulate you on your son's marriage? belated congrats, man! :o)

    yes, there's always one reason or another to keep the land line, isn't there. still, it would be nice to ditch it. ;o)
  • Pat
    We still have a land line phone. We are contemplating dumping it, but if order PPV movies with Directv it saves us like $5 each time by having it hooked up. My son, who just got married, only uses cell phones however.
  • Manny: phone cards are definitely a way to save more money with regards to cellphones. hmm... good point that not everyone still has adequate cellphone coverage.

    i was thinking that at the very least a land line is a good backup. but with the land line it's very expensive to do the long distance calls, especially to and from the Philippines.

    gotta research more about the internet phone possibilities....
  • Yes, we still have a landline phone at home. The reason is that the cell phone signals are not strong in our area. Until recently, they were almost non-existent. At that time two cell towers were raised in our area.

    It was only Christmas that my Mom finally had her own cell phone, which makes our household complete.

    I've been contemplating subscribing to Verizon FIOS and might convert the landline to FIOS, too. I don't know if the phone plan would cover long-distance calls within the US, but if it does, it would cut down on phone card use, which might make it worthwhile to subscribe. I'll have to think about it some more.
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