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Anyone here go back to landline service?

Started by reyzaguirr, April 27, 2018, 10:57:59 PM

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reyzaguirr

Hi; I'm new to the forum.  I have been collecting telephones for a little over a year and love them. 

I bought some vintage phones for my voip service and they worked well but I wouldn't mind getting a landline service, especially for emergencies.  I could drop the cell phone and get a home phone which would be great for not being on call all the time.  Anyone here go back to the old fashioned landline. 

Silly question, many of you probably never left.

MADhouseTelephone

At one time I had 2 Southwestern Bell lines. They were routed 7 miles via T1, and 5 miles via copper in a buried cable. I tried to have a bad ground hum fixed several times but no change. I shut off the noisier line and later cut the cable all together as wireless data became available. Verizon Wireless finally came up with the perfect device for me; a router with 3 ethernet ports and a modular jack for a voice line- for $20 a month plus data usage. I am on C*NET so satellite Internet wouldn't work and no other source was available to my home in the country.  I have 3 of these routers running now, plus 3 regular cell phones with unlimited calling and data. Last time I  checked on a landline, it would cost $55 just for a basic line with no long distance plan and no Internet access available at all. I was told when I  shut off my service that they would be putting in fiber soon, but that was 7 years ago with no sign of it ever happening yet. If they did, and I could get a decent plan, I  would buy in.
PS: the buried 3pr cable from the ped at the property line to the house got repurposed a few years ago to provide dial tone and 48vt power to the payphone at the end of the driveway!
ADavid, MADhouse Telephone

Key2871

Sadly, no. I'm cell only but my wife wanted voip, and went with magic yack. I'm not impressed. She needed to get an out of state number so if I call home I have Ten digits to dial, and that's only when it works. Quality is not good, a lot of the time it sounds like she's talking in a tube, or lots of noise on the line. I'd love to go land line again.
KEN

Pourme

I personally am done with land lines, for several years now. My wife's mother worked as a operator for our local telco for 40 years. She had the same number her entire adult life. We ported that number to her cell and did away with the land line all together. I have 2 magic jack lines, one for my business and one for my PBXs for my phone collection. Unlike Key, I get excellent service from my MJ lines at a excellent price (I pay 5 years at a time), no complaints. Maybe the the internet service the MJ is running on is the issue? 

Land lines are too expensive for the service provided, IMO.
Benny

Panasonic 308/616 Magicjack service

Key2871

Yea don't know what it is about this area, but often when she calls her parents, they have MJ too, they either can't hear her or it's like talking into a tube, or she hears,the MJ person you're trying to reach is currently unavailable, try your call later. Voip has it all over MJ at least around here. Same when she or I call the house line (MJ).
KEN

Pourme

What is your internet service like? I have Charter cable at 60mps and I have no issues at all.
Benny

Panasonic 308/616 Magicjack service

Key2871

Ha! It's nothing that fast, and that's probably why it doesn't work well. At best, I mean the fastest is 20. Time Warner- whatever is like getting behind a grandma on the freeway.
KEN

Babybearjs

never left at all....I hate cell phones... use them only if and when I travel.... my landline is through CableOne.... Centurylink can't proved the internet speed I want...
John

Protel8000

The telcos really just aren't competitive with phone service pricing. I don't think they want to be, so they can continue to kill off analog lines. My understanding is that new construction doesn't even get analog lines ran to it - it's all fiber or coax and any "landline" you get will be some kind of on-the-premises VoIP ATA disguised as a real landline.

I do have VoIP service, but obviously that is tied to having a working internet connection and power, so it's not something you want to rely on for an emergency. But I figure VoIP combined with cell service is "good enough" for now.

As far as Magic Jack, I've never heard anything good about their service, both with voice quality and customer service. Google Voice, for it's limitations, is pretty awesome at the price of free. I use Google Voice with an Obihai ATA and it is now my primary "landline" service. I also added a "free" CallCentric VoIP inbound line - it's not totally free, but the $1.50 a month or so provides me with E911 service.

So my setup is my Obihai ATA has the Google Voice and Call Centric Lines linked. All outbound calls, except for 911 go through Google Voice. If 911 is dialed (or the test number, 933) the Obi directs that out via the Call Centric line. I have Google Voice forward inbound calls to the Call Centric inbound line. I could go straight in from Google Voice to the Obi, but Google doesn't provide CNAM Caller ID - just the phone number. By routing to Call Centric, they actually have CNAM so I get full Name + Number caller ID for free.

It's a bit of a complicated setup, but for the price, it can't be beat. I think the voice quality is near landline. I would much rather have a voice conversation over this setup than over cellular.

I've even had success with tweaking some settings to get 300-1200 baud analog modems working over VoIP. I've been meaning to hook up my all-in-one printer/scanner/fax to see if I'm able to send and receive faxes over it.

jsowers

How many of you who are not on a POTS land line have phone service that works for days if the power is out? The original post mentioned that he wanted it for emergencies and nobody has addressed that. A lot of the solutions mentioned here are pretty heavy on equipment on premises and that would all require some kind of backup. You would need a UPS and a generator to last for days without power, and that's assuming that what comes into your house is backed up at the pole. And if it is, is it backed up for days or just hours?

With my landline I can call to see when the power is coming back on and they can call me with status reports. I don't have a cell phone and never have. I have had power outages last more than a day, but thankfully not often.

So in the area of power backup, I think the land line has an advantage. Whether that will continue is anyone's guess.

BTW, my internet and land line phone service together are $81.65 a month. It's a bundle and priced together. It also comes with free long distance and doesn't include my cable TV service, which also comes from the phone company.
Jonathan

twocvbloke

Over here in the UK, you don't really get much choice in whether or not you want a phoneline, as it's still the main delivery system for broadband, yes there are options for "Broadband only", but they increase the cost of it to compensate for the lack of being charged for having a telephony enabled line, pure fibreoptics are still somewhat rare here (thanks to some BT exec about 10 years ago stating "Nobody needs fibreoptic at home! So we won't put it in place!"), so the "last mile" for delivering what they *call* fibre (FTTC, or Fibre to the Cabinet) is over the pre-existing telephone wiring, and as it's cheaper to have a phone service with that, the majority of us have a phoneline, whether or not we need, want or use it...

At the moment I'm with Vodafone for FTTC & phone, and paying £27/mo (about $37 US) for a 80/20 (Down/Up) FTTC package and landline, no special features on the landline, calls are charged at a standard rate all day (no "free" evening/weekends), but given that it's rarely used in favour of mobile calls (unlimited texts & minutes with 2GB 4G data for £13/mo on my mobile), the bill doesn't exceed £30 a month anyway...

MADhouseTelephone

Quote from: Babybearjs on April 28, 2018, 08:07:46 PM
never left at all....I hate cell phones... use them only if and when I travel.... my landline is through CableOne.... Centurylink can't proved the internet speed I want...
Believe me, cell phone and I don't get along at all. I despise anything with a touch screen. But one of those routers I mentioned travels with me all the time (I drive a truck). So I can use my desktop computer to keep up with all you folks here, and I have a genuine 2500 clone (US Navy surplus, so the handset locks down) on my dash for making calls! One time I had to fly back from a job and I thought for sure they were going to want to search my bag-I had a router and a trimline in with the clothes.
ADavid, MADhouse Telephone

paul-f

POTS is totally gone in my area. Years ago, Verizon decided to go all fiber around here. First they replaced the copper from the CO to the street. That meant that there was local power and a back-up battery between me and the CO. If an outage was long enough to exhaust the battery, it was anyone's guess whether they'd show up with a generator to keep the service going. We have had two outages long enough to lose power.

Interestingly, the service was still "POTS-like" and was covered by regulated terms. Rotary dialing was supported.

The next step was to put fiber to the home, so that added another layer of local power and a battery - in each home. Subscribers are responsible for replacing that battery. We weren't given a choice, but could keep a POTS-like (regulated) plan, rather than going to their new digital service, which wasn't guaranteed to support rotary dialing. I stuck with the "old" plan, which is not available to new subscribers, and I imagine it's only a matter of time before I'm forced to "upgrade."

At this point in time, it's almost academic. So many callers are now on cell phones that the audio is almost unintelligible on most calls. Bandwidth is narrow and the compression artifacts are noticeable. We have to ask callers to repeat themselves a lot. Call quality is a far cry from 10-15 years ago.

I asked about dropping the phone service, and was told (as noted above) that it wouldn't reduce my bill much.  Thanks for nothing.
Visit: paul-f.com         WE  500  Design_Line

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Dan/Panther

SO FAR, I have never lived in an area that does not offer landline service. I've lived in New York, California, and Oregon.  Several areas in California.

D/P

The More People I meet, The More I Love, and MISS My Dog.  Dan Robinson

MMikeJBenN27

I never gave it up.  I only use my cell phone if I am not home, and I do NOT use it for important calls.  They can be hacked, and I don't like anybody eavesdropping me.  I am funny that way.  Home phone service is where its at, with PHONE COMPANY PHONES, NOT JAPANESE PHONES, NOT CORDLESS PHONES.