Mid-Week Poll: Keep Landline vs. Cell Phone Only

In today’s poll, I’d like you, our readers, to help me make an important life decision. All right, maybe it’s not that important. Nonetheless, I’d like some input. As I mentioned last week, I will be moving to a new house next month. Of the many decisions that Mrs. Z and I are faced with, we have to choose whether to keep our landline phone service, or dump it and just rely on our cell phones. I’m leaning one way, but Mrs. Z the other. What do you do at your home?

Personally, I think the landline is a waste of money. When I looked at our bills and saw that we could save a good chunk of change by dropping it, I was ready to go cell phone only. It will be only a minor inconvenience to notify friends, family and various institutions of the phone number change.

Mrs. Z, on the other hand, thinks that a landline is good to have in emergencies. She also likes having a home phone as our primary number, so that telemarketers, political campaign robo-calls and so forth will go to that answering machine rather than harassing her personal cell phone.

Another possible advantage to keeping the landline is that we have unlimited calling and long distance on that plan, whereas we’ll have to monitor the minutes on our cell phone plans if those get more use.

Which way should we go with this?

Landline vs. Cell Phone Only

View Results

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19 comments

  1. Alex

    I keep my landline as a communal phone and also for international dialing (my family is spread across three continents). That being said, I switched over to VoIP to save money.

  2. Chaz

    Well I have another option for you, look into Magic Jack to go along with your cell phones, the new Magic Jack plus works without a PC and just needs plugged into your home network, you can port a number over in most areas and it will run off of your internet connection (kind of like Vonage) but its much cheaper per year, when I originally signed up it was $100 for 6 years and we have regular home phones hooked into it and its there in case people cant reach us on our cell phones.

    From what I see, the device itself runs $70 without the need of a PC and $40 for the one that plugs into a PC. They still offer the 5 years of service for $100 and you get a 30 day free trial. Either of these can work if you travel too, as long as you have internet access and at that price you can still have a home phone AND keep your cell phones and you should be able to take your current home phone number with you.

    magicjack.com, look into it and see if it would work for you and Mrs. Z 🙂

    Now of course in a real emergency if you lose your internet at the house magicjack wont work, but you would still most likely have your cell phones in that situation

  3. William Henley

    I haven’t had a landline since 2004. Haven’t missed it. As for emergancies, if you are unable to tell the dispatcher where you are, they supposedly can access your phone’s GPS data. As for telemarketers and robocalls – its supposed to be illegal for them to call cell phones anyways. Most security systems (and I think even LifeAlert) now have cell options and no longer require landlines. The only place that I use a landline is at work…. Oh wait, actually, Avaya is VoIP, as is Nortel and most other phone systems this day and age, so that technically is not a landline either.

  4. BSTNFAN

    You just bought a new house that you’re going to build a home theater in. There are going to be many more important decisions coming up that you want to save your “wins” for, so this decision is simple: Do whatever the hell Mrs. Z tells you to do.

  5. nelll

    Well, I will say ditch the land line. Use the cellphone. BTW if you have an android phone you can use Google Talk link to your cellphone number for free. You can either pick a 1 (800) number if you like (one time only though). Provide that number to companies and telemarketing people. You can turn the app on and off as you wish. Google have voicemail services and the options to track your missed calls online (read and listen to your voicemails).

    The beauty of Google talk is that when a person calls to that Google number you can set up a greeting message (the person will have to say their name) Google will forward the call from their servers to your real cellphone number, you will pick up and listen to the person’s name first and you will decide what to do or you can just send all numbers to Google voicemail and check later. You have countless options my friend. Don’t give away your money to have a landline phone. I’ve been using Google services for years now. I’m sure that is mandatory to have a 911 access even if you don’t pay for landline services. The question will be. Does your cellphone company has enough coverage in your area to avoid landline altogether? Are you guys committed to charge your cellphones every night? If you don’t have answers to those questions then having just a cellphone could become a complete nightmare. Congrats for the House and god bless your family. Good luck!

  6. EM

    This has to be the most ridiculous poll question I have ever seen at the Bonus View. Don’t you know by now that you should defer to Mrs. Z’s prodigious wisdom? 🙂

  7. Jason

    We’ve been landlineless for about 5 years. Prior to that my wife and I probably used the phone once a day. It made sense for us to ditch it.

    • EM

      50–50: he gets their cell phones, she gets the landline.

      Besides, I thought I might win a prize from Mrs. Z, such as my choice of one of Mr. Z’s Blu-rays. Or maybe she’d knit me a replica of the Enterprise or something.

  8. nelll

    Oh EM, if I were you I would convince Mrs. Z to make Josh to take you to one of those trips to Dolby Labs. :)~

  9. Dan Hirshleifer

    Haven’t had a landline in years, and haven’t missed it. As for telemarketers, put yourself and Mrs. Z on the national do not call list. If telemarketers do get through, there are apps that can block unwanted callers.

  10. ToddAllyn

    Ditched my landline when I changed jobs and states in 2002. Figured I was getting a new number anyhow. (Number portability had not yet become an option.) Have not missed the landline at all.

  11. Pyronaut

    I haven’t had a land line for a year and haven’t missed it. But then, I have a cheap plan that gives me unlimited nation wide calls and text (though even then I only use it for people within a 2 hour radius).

    As for emergencies, don’t cell phones still work then? I would image if something disastrous happens to knock out all cell towers, then you’d probably have bigger problems than just making a phone call.