anyone without plain old telephone?

[smilingcat]

I'm seriously tempted to get rid of my regular wired plain old telephone. Virgin Mobil has a no contract month to month service for cheap. Cheaper than my regular old telephone and it seems silly to have both. So I wish to cancel my old telephone and go strictly mobile.

Any downside?? coverage of the mobile is good in places where I will be.

your comment would be very appreciated especially from those who are strictly mobile and sans wired telephone.

smilingcat

[VeloVT]

I got rid of my landline about two years ago, when I got cable internet. My cell phone is perfectly adequate by itself for phone purposes, I have a wireless router and cheap fast internet via cable, and even have an inexpensive Vonage account for fax (rarely use it but is a lifesaver once in a while. on the fence about keeping it actually). Now if only cable TV weren't so darned expensive, and if only I hadn't gotten hooked on having the better cable -- I CAN'T go back to the worse cable with awful inexorably scrolling channel menu and no cycling...

Anyway overall I'm saving money, with no loss of convenience...

[kat_h]

I got rid of my landline last week. I don't use phones much anyway, and will probably use skype for calling my grandparents. Everyone else figured out long ago that I'll ignore a ringing phone but check email so no one phones me.

When I lived in England I didn't have any phone at all for about 6 months. I lived in a small enough town that friends would just show up at my door.

[Zen]

Virgin Mobil has a no contract month to month service for cheap.

month-to-month
cheap
what's not to like?

[Meg McKilty]

Only downside I have found is you may have to replace the battery more often (once every year or year&.5)

[songlady]

My husband and I have been without a land line since we got married, 5 years and 2 cell phones between us. We like it just fine

[singletrackmind]

The main thing I haven't liked about Virgin Mobile is the coverage area. I guess if I'm going to be carrying the stupid thing around I'd like to be able to call from most wherever I am. Not the case with this phone.

[crazybikinchic]

We got a landline for internet purposes only. We went to digital where we do not need a phone line, but have kept it. We only use it for faxing and keep it unplugged unless faxing. What is funny is that we have never given out that phone number and every time we have it plugged in, we always seem to get multiple sales calls. How is that?????

[bmccasland]

Natural disasters. After Katrina & Rita the digital towers went down. No one could call into the area codes for southern Louisiana and Mississippi. Now in some areas the land lines went down as well - knocked over by the storm surge or trees falling on the lines. While I was evacuated, I was "roaming" on my cell, so I could call out, but no one could call me. And then the towers would get clogged. Frankly I was happy no one could call me, gave me a modicum of control over my crazy life. But I couldn't reach anyone else (friends, colleagues) unless internet searches, gave me an alternate number to call. My land line was fully functional long before the cell towers were able to handle the load.

[NoNo]

I've been cell-only ever since I graduated from college 5 years ago. Didn't see the point, especially since I never came close to using my minutes, why should I pay for another line I wasn't going to use? Plus, the money had to go elsewhere. Now I don't even have internet at home. I suppose in an emergency situation a landline would be useful, but in CT you're never far from someone; I could always run upstairs and use my neighbor's phone if it were that urgent.

This just made me think, if we're planning for emergency situations, how many of you with landlines also have wired phones and not just cordless? Just occurred to me that those wouldn't be very useful if there's no power.

[KSH]

Well, I live alone... no kids, etc. So for me, having a land line was pretty much useless and a waste of money since I had a cell phone.

I have only had a cell phone for about 6 years now. Has worked out just fine.

[roadie gal]

There must be something wrong with me. I'm thinking of cancelling the CELL phone and just keeping the landline. Up here in the mountains the cell phone coverage is so sporadic that it's almost useless. I use MAYBE 30 minutes of my 500/month. The voice mails are almost as unreliable as the phone calls. They may show up right away, they may show up next month... During snowstorms the cell towers almost always go down and the electicity goes out all of the time. I have an old princess phone that plugs directly into the phone jack for those occasions.

The only time I use the cell phone is if I'm travelling. (When was the last time anyone in the US saw a payphone?)

[tulip]

I have two cell phones: one for personal use and one for business use. I have internet through the cable company, but no land line. It works fine for me.

[Crankin]

Well, I'm kinda old fashioned, too. My husband wants to ditch the land line, but I won't let him because of 911. We have voip through Comcast (used to have Vonage, but it got increasingly worse over the past 3 years). We have 2 hard wired phones and 3 wireless ones in the house.
I have a cell phone, but I only put it on when I go out in the car and I leave it on at work, since as a teacher, I cannot easily get to a regular phone. I want people to call me on my home phone, not on my cell, unless it's really important. I don't want to be bothered when I am out, like not even hear the phone ring or vibrate. I consider the cell phone a safety thing, but I don't go around checking it every second or looking at it in my hand like some people. I don't even have a camera on my phone and I had to really convince the guy at the Sprint store that i didn't need one! I mean, I don't even take pictures with my camera.
I do bring my phone on my rides, but I only put it on when we are leading a ride; once I had it off and my husband tried to call me because I hadn't showed up at a stopping point. I was the sweep and I was with someone who was having leg cramps. Everyone was waiting for me and I would have been able to communicate more easily if my phone had been on!

All this technology stuff gets on my nerves. I can't remember how anything works and I feel like there's hardly anything in my house that I can easily use.