Home phone

lugnut

lugnut

Well-Known Member
Joined
Mar 23, 2005
Location
SnowCamp
Has anyone turned theirs off ? I am thinking about turning mine off. It will be years before I can get DSL and I'm way too far out for cable. My only high speed internet options are satilate or the wireless cards. If I dont use my phone line for dial up I dont see any need to keep it. The only hitch I can think of would be 911 service but with 4 cell phones in the house on 2 diffrent cariers I dont think I would have a problem getting a call out. Any thing I'm over looking?
 
i did not have a home phone for the last 4 years with no issues

I just got vonage. because we had a kid and the wife wanted a home phone
 
I haven't had a Land line in about 4-5 years either. but the wife is trying her best to talk me into one for the girls now that they are moving into the "phone talking" age... :P

I've got no issues with not having a land line.
 
Actually we just cut ours off last week. We've been talking about it for years, and were kind of hesitant not to have a land line. When my wife called to cancel, they tried to talk her out of it (of course), mentioning we might need to use 911. Well, just for kicks, I tried to make a call and got the following recording..."You can only make calls to 911 from this phone. If you wish to re-establish service you must call from another location".
 
I haven't had a land line for 7 years now and don't miss it one bit. I use high speed cable internet and I'm good. We have 2 cell phones and have free mobile to mobile, so its fairly reasonably priced.
 
as far as 911 from a cell phone...

ive heard that since 911 is a priority call, your cell phone will use whatever towers it needs to use to get a signal out, rather than use the company towers it normally uses..
 
I've heard it takes slightly longer to zero in on a cell phone than a 911 call from a landline. Say, you get cut off before delivering a location. Probably no longer than it would take the responding officer to finish his doughnut and waddle to the cruiser, though. ;) I'd have dropped mine years ago, but my reception sucks in my house. Not the neighborhood, just the house and yard. Pisses me off.
 
My one main reason for keeping a land line is the "ice storm" a few years back where all the cell lines were totally wrapped up. That and my MIL can call the house and not use up all my minutes!
 
leave your phone plugged into the wall. i think state law requires the phone company to give you access to 911 whether you have a current account with the phone company or not. Im pretty sure you can dial 911 and 0 but thats it.
 
We've discused it, it hardly ever gets used, anyone who calls us, calls our cellphones, all our family members are using the same cell company, so those are all free.

We currently have TW Digital phone, and we are discussing swapping the number to a third cell, then forwarding it to my cell and shutting off the third cell unless we need it.

Seems Verizon can't port 2 lines to one cell phone for what ever reason.

As for 911 calls from a cell, I've made a few ( witnessed a few accidents and a knuckle head driving the wrong direction on I-40) They knew pretty quickly where I was, just asked me to conferm location. And, my phone will not drop the 911 call if you flip closed, you have to press END to finish the call.
 
problem with land line is, in the event of a problem, i end up with the 'all circuits are busy' message until everything else is fixed... So whats the point then????
 
We haven't had one in 4 years. Don't miss it one bit. In fact, now that we're staying at the MIL's I find hers annoying as hell. The stupid thing rings 4-5 times every evening. I couln't see spending the money anymore for a land line that we never used.
 
I got Vonage over 3 years ago. I did have a land line at the time, but after a few months of Vonage, I turned the land line off. Haven't regretted it since. They do have you fill out your 911 address stuff when you sign up, and I have had to call 911 from the Vonage phone and had no issues getting to dispatch right away.

It is a pain if the internet goes out, but then again so was a land line that got zapped with every thunderstorm.
 
For those who do not have good reception in their home but want to loose the land line... go to

Magicjack.com

40.00 a year... yes YEAR you get internet telephone. plug the jack into your USB port and your phone into the jack.
 
Thanks. Its nice to know you can still make 911 calls from your land line if you have to. I have wanted to get rid of my phone for years but hadnt had good reception on the wireless cards and cell phones until now.
 
Blkvoodoo said:
As for 911 calls from a cell, I've made a few ( witnessed a few accidents and a knuckle head driving the wrong direction on I-40) They knew pretty quickly where I was, just asked me to conferm location. And, my phone will not drop the 911 call if you flip closed, you have to press END to finish the call.
Click to expand...

Interesting...

I'm guessing this is just a 911 feature. When I lost my cell phone, I asked Verizon if there was anyway to triangulate and give me an approximate location of my phone. they said NOPE. Seems to me that the phone companies would have to set that deal up for the 911 dispatch offices.
 
I thought about going to vonage cause its cheaper. The only problem I have with it is my home burgalar/fire alarm system uses an autodialer with an old fashion land line. My land line phone works during a power failure (with an old-school phone) unlike an internet based system.
Oh, and here is a good read on the E-bomb for the truely paranoid.http://www.unitedstatesaction.com/emp-terror.htm
 
my Vonage wil nto go out unless the cable line goes out..

I have a few Backup Batteries that can run my PC's, Cable modem, vonage modem, etc..

plus now I have agenerator that I am working on getting wired into the house :)
 
911 from a cell is a priority call, but it won't use any other towers than it normally would. The only time it would is if you had a roaming restriction and used it to call 911 when on a system you aren't supposed to use.
As for location, the FCC has decreed that all wireless 911 calls go to phase 2 info by the end of this year.
Phase 2 info contains:
the site and sector you are calling from
your cell number
and the latitude and longitude you are call from (the phone's location within about 300 feet)

We (Suncom) have had it rolled out for about a year already. It works great.
 
BRUISER said:
my Vonage wil nto go out unless the cable line goes out..
I have a few Backup Batteries that can run my PC's, Cable modem, vonage modem, etc..
plus now I have agenerator that I am working on getting wired into the house :)
Click to expand...
Hmm...I'll have to look into that again, maybe save a few $
 
We have packet 8
Like Vonage, but when shoppin around, Vonage didn't have a local prefix for us. Not sure about now.
That magic jack looks inviting. I wonder what if anything it charges those who call you.
 
etjeep said:
I thought about going to vonage cause its cheaper. The only problem I have with it is my home burgalar/fire alarm system uses an autodialer with an old fashion land line. My land line phone works during a power failure (with an old-school phone) unlike an internet based system.
Oh, and here is a good read on the E-bomb for the truely paranoid.http://www.unitedstatesaction.com/emp-terror.htm
Click to expand...

IF the cable company has installed a UPS in your general vicinity, then you'll have Cable and VOIP, AS LONG AS you have power to your cable modem ( and as long as the UPS batteries last)

My area does not have the UPS powering the system, as nobody would allow the big box for the batteries in their yard ( I wouldn't care, just park it next to the green transformer the power company has already planted, it's already been ran over a few times :flipoff2: Only once by me. )

I tried to power up my phone during a power outage one night, yeah, the modem was working, but the cable was out becasue there was no back up power system for the cable.

I asked a TW cable tech about this and that was the explination I got.

THis explained the three forms I had to fill out when we went to VoiP, explaining that there would be NO PHONE if the power went out.

Telephone land lines are required to work for 40hrs ( or something close) if there is a power outage unless there is an actual break in the line itself. Is why you still have phone when the power goes out, it's all run off batteries.
 
On some VoIP systems like Vonage if you move and take your phone number with you, you have to update the address they have on file, otherwise when you call 911 they'll come to the old address.
 
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