Three thoughts on this:
First, if we got better mobile reception at our house, this would be tempting. Adding the Verizon femtocell has helped, but not as much as I liked.
Second, this has the interesting effect of fragmenting family communication. You don't have phone numbers for "The Smiths," you have separate numbers for Bob, Susan, Billy, and Stacey. (Or the number you have for Billy and Stacey is their 'rents' mobiles, which has its own interesting issues).
On the other hand, with number portability, the phone number you have for Billy, once he gets a mobile, is likely to be how you can contact him for life.
On the other hand, if you've heard that Bob died … do you have Susan's number to call her up with your condolences? Or if you've been trying to reach Bob and you can't — whom do you call?
On the other hand, it means a family being on vacation isn't necessarily completely out of touch until they return.
Third, does this mean that if you want to be possibly reached in the middle of the night (by family, if not by your boss), then you must carry your mobile upstairs with you to bed? (And, thus, carry it with you effectively everywhere?)
I realize a lot of the above questions are already a reality for a lot of folk (as the below shows), but they're things I'd think about before cutting the land line.
Reshared post from +Les Jenkins
We've been wireless only since late 2005. Wow, that's almost 9 years now.
41% Of U.S. Homes Are Now Wireless-Only
Ten years ago, only about 1-in-20 American homes were cellphone-only. By 2010, that rate had soared to 1-in-5. And according to the newest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, …
We keep our charges on our nightstand and we plug in our phones at bedtime most every night. It's just another part of the getting ready for bed routine. Seeing as I usually wear shirts with a pocket that's where the phone spends most of its time so I need to take it out before taking off my shirt anyway.
Most of our family have adapted to the idea that if they want me it's one number and if they want Anne it's the other number and if it doesn't matter then it's whichever number they remember first.
Reception in our apartment isn't fantastic — we get 1 to 2 bars — but it's enough for crystal clear calls without dropping. When we were up at Mackinac Island last week we were out of T-Mobile's service area, but they have an agreement with AT&T that allowed us to use our phones without extra cost. Though we were limited to 10MB of roaming data.
We have hardly missed the landline and we got rid of it 8-9 years ago. The only time I do miss it is during extended power outages.
When I moved down to Florida from Kentucky (about…5, 6,(?) years ago) I cut the cord and haven't gone back. When my wife and I married, we decided just to keep out cells and not go with a landline.
It hurt us for about a year, when we were with T-Mobile and lived in a "dead zone" (that they knew about and, finally, let us out of our contract), but we switched over to AT&T and have been golden ever since.
It's nice not that extra bill from the phone compnay, too.
I haven't had a landline since last century… It does mean my cell is always with me, but it's always with me anyway because it's my primary connection to the Internet.
VOIP should really be the successor to the landline. The internet is a medium that almost all households have in one form or another and the call quality has improved drastically in the last 10 years.
+Nick McIntosh Agree…VOIP is a great option to address these things at hopefully low cost–and if the advantages outweigh the cost, then you just manage with your cell.
Side note: As my daughter heads to college, I was shocked that the dorms no longer have phones…you have to use a cell phone. This means:
* When you give your number to a project partner, school employer, etc, you are giving them your "number for life".
* There is no student "directory" for phone numbers (though there is email, I believe)
My cell phone is my alarm clock, so it naturally goes to bed with me. It might be slightly native of me, but my reaction is, "Well, of course your phone is with you everywhere you go. That's how this works."
Reception is somewhat weak at the house with Virgin/Sprint, so I'm considering switching to T-Mobile once they've confirmed which devices are getting Android L. Husbandperson has them, and he never has the coverage or data issues that I have.
+Nick McIntosh Comcast regularly bugs us about changing over to their VOIP. I've told them once their data uptime is as good as our land line uptime, I'll consider it. The fact is, I don't want to put that many eggs into one basket. (That said, our femtocell for Verizon is, effectively, a broadcasting VOIP, so we do make some use of it.)
+Dave Hill There are cable company alternatives. Vonage and Ooma are two that immediately come to mind. They run over your existing internet connection, which ever that may be.
+Greg Stockton That's fascinating. When I was in college, back between fighting off dinosaurs and making notes in cuneiform on clay tablets, we had hallway phones (call out only to elsewhere on campus, though folks could call in from outside) shared by every four or five rooms, and payphones scattered around the dorm. Only the hoity-toity paid to have phone installed in their rooms (usually having to pay to get the wiring done, too).
Later on, when that went away and everyone had phones in their rooms, I thought that was a blow to sociability, since folk were no longer taking messages for each other, or sitting out in the hall talking on the phone and waving at passersby.
I suppose reliance on mobiles makes a lot of sense — and makes it a lot easier to get hold of people. But that "lifetime number" is an interesting change.
Hmmmmm. I might posit a future cultural shift, akin to taking a new name upon adulthood, to taking a new number at major transition points in life, so as to break that chain of eternal contacts …
+Nick McIntosh I'd have to check the costs — but since we get our Internet via cable (Comcast), it's still the same technological basket.
+Andy Brokaw See, there's another difference I have with a lot of folk. I much prefer sitting at (well, standing at) my computer to use the Internet with a big screen and keyboard, rather than my mobile. I use it for Net connectivity, but only when not at a computer.
True. You are forever at the mercy of the provider, internet or VOIP, to keep their service online. And cable internet is just a susceptible to line outages as a landline.
In theory, those up times would increase over time. But that's assuming meaningful investment in upgrading/maintaining the infrastructure.
I’ll be keeping my landline until they pry it out…well, you know the rest. When we have power outages, guess where neighbors (who have FIOS) come to use the phone? Yes, sometimes if it’s a bad storm and outage, I lose service, but most of the time, it’s there.
@Ellie – That’s basically my thought.