Engadget is reporting some stats that households are increasingly dropping their landline phone service for mobiles only. For safety reasons, I highly recommend against this.
… In the latter half of 2007, it was discovered that 16-percent of domiciles didn’t even have a landline
Mobile phones are great… until you need to call 9-1-1 (or anyone else in an emergency). They just aren’t reliable.
Also make sure you have at least one old, corded phone in the house. Phone lines carry their own power and may still work in a power outage. But you won’t know that if all you have are cordless phones plugged into an outlet near the phone jack.
Reader interactions
10 Replies to “Don’t Drop That Landline”
One could say that about short-wave or HAM radio, too, and it would actually be far more reliable when coupled with a decent generator…
These days, having a landline is a bit like buying insurance. You might never need it but if disaster strikes and the cell network goes down, that extra monthly fee is going to look very cheap.
I’‘m in that 16% of households who don’‘t have landline service. Haven’‘t had a land line since before the turn of the millennium, and haven’‘t missed it at all.
Verizon’s cell service works fine at the house. I just can’‘t see spending $20/month for the (possibly) better 911 service that Qwest would provide me.
And similarly, with VOIP, this recent Canadian tragedy of an 18 month old’s death has been blamed on the 911 call not getting through to the right CITY’s emergency dispatcher…
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/calgary/story/2008/05/05/rethinking-voip.html
“…Their internet phone service provider, Comwave, did not patch their call through to Calgary’s emergency centre. Instead, Comwave’s call centre operator dispatched an ambulance to the Luck family’s former home in Mississauga, Ont. — the last address the company had on file.”
You wouldn’‘t actually need to pay for landline service would you?
Tim,
I’‘ve got nearly 20 years experience in emergency services. That mobile phone is one of the most revolutionary tools in public safety. I keep mine with me all the time.
But the mobile system sucks in any large scale emergency, including power outages. You need both; I’‘m not telling people to drop their cell phones, but to keep an emergency landline at the cheapest rate possible in their homes.
There’s a reason any mobile command center keeps a couple hundred feet of phone line ready to spool out to the nearest jack.
Oh – i haven’‘t had a phone line in my house since 1997.
They just aren’‘t reliable
You’‘re wrong. If whomever discovers you lying on the floor in a pool of your blood knows that you have a landline around and says to himself – “I’‘ll use the landline to call for this emergency instead of this perfectly working mobile phone I have with me!” than you may have a point. Your home landline doesn’‘t work in a car, a boat, a train, or an airplane. It doesn’‘t work outside. It also won’‘t work when the telephone pole is now in your living room window during a storm.
Quite simply – mobile phones are highly versatile devices that everyone and their brothers dogs has. Its one of the best things to have in an emergency.
Yes, phone lines are still self-powered, BUT… at least here on the East Coast, as Verizon (our local bell) migrates everyone to digital telephony and fiber optic Internet (FIOS), they’‘ve also slipped into their literature that their local junction boxes are running on battery backup, not the line power of old. So, if your neighborhood loses power for more than 8 hours, it’s very likely that you will lose your landline as the UPS in the shed up the street runs out of juice.
Personally, we’‘ve not had a landline in our house since 2002. It’s saved us at least $50/month since that time. We’‘ve never had problems with signal strength and reliability. The tradeoff analysis seems to favor ditching the POTS.
Thank you. You have provided me with a legitimate reason to keep my my wife from throwing my rotary it in the trash. For at least as long as the phone company continues to offer cable.