Your Take: Home Phone Service or Not
Recently, I’ve been sifting through our spending, thinking of ways to save a few dollars. One popular way to trim down monthly bills is to cut out the home phone service. Just about everyone has a cell phone, so why keep a home phone too? There are some benefits to having a home phone but is it worth the additional cost?
Benefits of Having a Home Phone
Here are the reasons I found for maintaining a home phone. Feel free to comment with your own reasons.
- Safety – A huge reason for keeping a landline is safety. First, many home security systems work in conjunction with the home phone line. Second, it’s important to always be able to call for help. In an emergency, you don’t want to wonder if you have service. Plus, 911 call centers can quickly trace a landline. Third, some kids (less and less these days) don’t have cell phones.
- Backup – It’s easy to loose a cell phone. I’ve lost mine several time (and thankfully found it). But having a home phone as a secondary phone isn’t a bad idea. It’s also nice to have a home phone when your cell isn’t charged or you’ve gone over your alloted minutes.
- Odds -n- Ends – I’ve also read that some DVR’s actually use landlines to transmit information, and some schools require one (is that true?).
Vonage Phone Service
Jocie and I use Vonage for our home phone service. Vonage works well and is relatively inexpensive. Here are some more details.
- Reliable High speed internet connection required
- Unlimited local and long distance calling to the US, Canada, and Puerto Rico.
- Free Calls to Italy, France, Spain, UK and Ireland!
- Typical features like call waiting, voicemail, and caller ID included
- $30.02 a month
While writing this post, I came across an offer from Vonage for some significant savings. I can get the same service for $239.99 if I pay for the entire year. $239.99 / 12 = $19.99. Not bad!
Poll the Audience
I’m really curious what the audience has to say. Do you keep a home phone? What kind of service do you use? Has anybody cut out the landline to save money? Are there any odd benefits / requirements to have a home phone that I missed?
Image courtesy of aussiegall
Comments & Conversation on this Article...
15 Responses to Your Take: Home Phone Service or Not
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May 29th, 2009 7:37 am
We decided to keep our phone. Ultimately we switched over to a VOIP system with our internet and cable company with a package deal that saved us some significant money.
May 29th, 2009 8:55 am
I have not had a home phone for the past 6 years. I only have my cell phone and decided that a home phone was not worth it. A lot of the time I am not home anyways and a cell phone was more convenient for me to carry around.
May 29th, 2009 9:03 am
We also use Vonage and no cell phones. While I drool over the iPhone, we decided a while back to cut out anything we could out of our budget and are enjoying it quite a bit.
May 29th, 2009 9:15 am
I honestly thought that the VoIP phones like Vonage and Comcast would not give 911 services your location, so I hadn’t considered them. I had also heard that the quality of the VoIP phone services was bad (my brother dumped Vonage after just one month, but that was just after they started). I’m guessing that perhaps on both counts I’m working with outdated information.
We have a regular landline, and though it’s conceivable that we might replace it with a VoIP based phone, we’re very unlikely to ditch it and use only our cells.
May 29th, 2009 9:21 am
DishNetwork does require us to connect to a phone line to buy movies (which we very rarely ever do). Also some of the DVR’s are suppose to be connected to a phone line 24 hours a day or else they’ll charge you $5 a month. I’m not exactly sure what the purpose of that is. They probably want to insure that the doesn’t have any privacy. LOL
We just switched to Vonage last month. Our bill after taxes was $24. That includes voicemail and some other features I could care less about. Unlimited local and long distance calls. That is up to 500 OUTGOING minutes and unlimited incoming minutes. Last month we used 300 outgoing minutes. Even if we do go over and have to pay the extra .10 a minute (or whatever exactly it is) then we’d still have to use a TON of minutes until we get to the next plan up.
I do have a cell phone from Alltel. It’s $5 a month and the money accumulates in my account. I then use the money to pay for calls at .10 a minute. The minutes/money don’t expire. I never use my cell phone except for emergencies or maybe once a month at most. I would hate to have people calling me to chat when I’m out running errands or driving down the road. I see people blabbing on those things all the time. I can’t imagine wasting $60+ dollars a month for one. Last thing I want to do is pay all that money so other people can convienently call (bug) me. LOL
Cutting my landline would cost me an extra $5 for the DVR and I’d have to buy cell phone which would cost….what….$60+ for a family of four at least? No thanks, I’ll keep my $24 landline, no extra charge for the DVR and my $5 cell phone for emergency use.
May 29th, 2009 9:27 am
Hey Ethan,
Ted and I don’t have a land line and I don’t miss it one bit! We did get an ADT system and pay an extra $7/mo. to have a cell call-out feature (the system can call emergency services with the cellular system it has built in. It’s actually safer because someone can’t cut our phone line before breaking in.
We can also push the 911 button on the pad if we need to call 911 and the cells aren’t working.
Once we have kids we may need to reconsider but I think i’d still go with another cell phone to leave in the house for them to call out. It would only cost another $9.99/mo. And by the time we have kids, they’ll probably be use to having cell phones by the age of 7 anyway!
May 29th, 2009 9:35 am
Following up on K. Cleaver’s comments about the DVR. We have DishNetwork, and they do require a connection to their system if you want to avoid the $5.00 charge. You can do it by phone, but you can also do it via the Internet.
We don’t have a phone outlet near our t.v.. I also didn’t want to run an ethernet cable from our router to the DVR. So I took advantage of a third option.
Our DVR has a built-in HomePlug adapter, which can connect to the Internet over the electrical system. So I bought a HomePlug adapter for the router. Plugged the HomePlug adapter into the router and into the electrical outlet. Ethernet travels from the router, over the house wiring system, and into the DVR via the power cord for the required Internet connection.
We avoid the $5.00 charge without a phone line.
We still have the phone line, btw, both for safety reasons (even have an old-fashioned corded phone hooked up in case of power failure) and because our Internet is DSL, which requires an active phone service.
May 29th, 2009 11:29 am
How do people do a non-home phone system when there are 5 cells in the house. Does that mean that all cells have to increase minutes? Or is there a 6th cell that is anchored to the house that has a lot of minutes.
May 29th, 2009 11:33 am
Definitely have a land line at home. Since cable is not available I need to have a land line for DSL. Not to mention cell coverage is spotty at best in my county and have a roaming signal at home only when I’m lucky. Even then, I can only send and receive calls outside if at all.
May 29th, 2009 2:14 pm
We have a land line phone. My husband has a cell phone, but I only have a Tracfone that is used when I am traveling.
We have a bundle for service with cable TV, internet, and phone service. We pay a little over $100/month for all three.
Our daughter only has a cell phone. But then she is a starving teacher and has no internet or cable.
May 29th, 2009 5:32 pm
I have only had a cell phone for the last 12 years. I have not found that it makes a difference at all. The last time I had a land line was when I lived with my parents, so I’ve never paid for traditional phone service.
My sister has not had a land line for the last 15 years.
Most of the people I know who are around my age have never had land lines and don’t really see a reason to get one. (Why pay two bills for phone service, when it’s the same thing?)
May 29th, 2009 7:09 pm
VOIP from Comcast works fantastic. It works so well that I often forget that its really VOIP. 911 works just like anyone else’s and we were able to keep our phone number. When you combine it with your cable and internet it’s a great savings.
May 29th, 2009 10:23 pm
I prefer to keep my landline. I don’t like using a cell phone and don’t want to be tied down with a long contract and expensive cancellation fees, and all the mess that goes with it…in case I need to cancel service. I have a prepaid Tracfone which I use only when I am on the road, away from my home phone. I don’t give out my cell number to people either.
May 29th, 2009 10:36 pm
We have a land line but never use it and never answer it. We use cell phones for all calling, (and I’m one who prefers to talk while driving. I’m good at it). We’ve just been keeping the land line for our security system and for DSL. We prefer Dish over cable so cable broadband is out. But if, according to Beth, we don’t really need the land line for the alarm system, we might be flexible about letting go of it. That would save us about $30/month. Interesting.
May 30th, 2009 8:44 am
Before we got married, neither of us had a land line and only used cell phones. After we got married, we decided to get the landline to have a single place to reach both of us… Later with kids we decided to keep it for the 911 aspect.
We’ve had four different carriers in this house – two traditional copper carriers at first (Verizon and Cavalier) – both were fine and the only difference we noticed was price (Cavalier was a little cheaper as long as you like having all the options).
Later we tried Vonage over Comcast and HATED it. Calls constantly dropped and we suspected that Comcast might actually be to blame. Vonage and its customers had a class action lawsuit against Comcast for some time, I believe because Comcast gave its own VOIP system priority on the network and there was suspicion that they may have intentionally degraded the signal of other carriers.
Most recently we had Verizon’s FIOS package installed for Cable, Internet and TV. Best service we’ve ever had BY FAR. In one year of service we’ve never had an outtage (either cable or internet) and never had a dropped or fuzzy call. The drawback: it’s pricy. I think we pay $145/mo for expanded cable+DVR, 15/2 internet, and their unlimited LD plan. Despite the cost, we’re so impressed across the board with FIOS it’ll take a great force to move us off.