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My landline just rang. I ignored it. I never bother with it anymore…

A strange thing happened this afternoon as I was working away at home. My landline rang and I did absolutely nothing.

I let it ring out.

I didn’t care.

And for the first time ever, I’ve finally arrived into the mindset of: You’re completely irrelevant.

Now then, I still use the landline for calling my parents — although, I say that, really… no. I don’t. I just think I do.

The more I think about it I hardly every make a call on it.

And I definitely, definitely do not ever receive calls on the landline. Nobody knows the number.

Well, again, let me correct myself: Nobody important to me knows the number. Despite making sure it was Ex-Directory when we activated it here in Ascot about 3 months ago, we receive the odd rubbish call from someone wanting to do a survey (where you answer yes, yes, yes and on that basis, they try and flog you something).

I’m seriously considering switching the phone’s ringer off — if that’s possible.

I used to keep the landline for conference calls and for proper phone calls but nowadays Skype (and my BT Infinity connection) is highly reliable and far better quality.

The only reason we have a landline is because there’s no choice. You need one if you want an internet connection. At least, you did when I ordered my line a little while ago. I wonder how long it will be before we can actually avoid ordering a landline at all?

What’s your policy on landlines?

24 COMMENTS

  1. Sadly, Ofcom chickened out of Naked DSL. That would have meant you could have had broadband without a landline.  Personally, I moved to the lowest line rental (http://www.thephone.coop/) and left it at that.

    I use the landline for 3 things (in order of use)
    1) Being annoyed by telemarketers
    2) Listening to voicemail from parents who haven’t quite got the hang of ringing a person rather than a place.
    3) Dialling 0800 numbers – they cost money to call on many UK mobile tariffs.

    I suppose that the 999 feature may be useful. But I’d have to trapped in the house, the local Vodafone mast would have had to have blown over, and be suffering from a power-cut so my femtocell didn’t work, for me to rely on it!

    I may get rid of it if we decide to get cable broadband.

  2. I never connected at home to a fixed landline in the last 10 years or so. I even do not remember phone # they gave me together with internet plan. Moreover, I have large LCD which never connected to a TV  or satellite antenna in the last 4 years.

  3. I do the same… The phone is there plugged-in but I’ve no idea what tariff we’re on or how much it costs to call… or for that matter if we’d be better off using the landline when at home.

    I use Skype and GoToMeeting in my home office because it’s high-quality and the chat / screen sharing adds important value to calls. Mrs Smith uses a dial-through number to call family overseas (until we get them setup with broadband and Skype) from her mobile.

    Like you, I have BT infinity which means HD voice and mega uploads/downloads are now entirely possible.

  4. Move to Finland! 🙂 No, seriously, all broadband plans out here, no matter the cost, come without a land line. Oh yes some try to bundle it with their TV-over-the-internet thing but a firm no is all it takes to get them to shut up! In fact, the last house I knew that had a land line, because it lay in a small hollow right on the edge of coverage between two masts, got rid of it about 18 months ago because both of the masts got a power boost!

    Also, and on this I am not entirely sure how it works, a lot of local (to me) places like the school and the doctors have a number of mobile numbers for contacting them on. But it doesn’t ring a mobile, it rings a huge multifunction (think West Wing or even 24) desktop phone of the type usually connected to a land line!

    Oh and they still use fax a lot up here too! 😛

  5. I have a landline for broadband access but I haven’t had a phone plugged in for about 5 years.  I really can’t think of a time when it has been any kind of a problem at all.  It is also great for those times you need to give someone a telephone number but don’t really want them to be able to contact you.  It saves a lot of hassle.  My landline is my public number and my mobile acts as a private line.

  6. We have home broadband so the phone is just there. We rarely use it, myself and the parent use my mobile to make use of my 600 minutes! I stopped answering about 3/4 years ago. [mum still answers it] It’s a waste of money & we only get free weekend calls. I’d love to have virgin broadband only but we live just outside the city & there’s no cable here. The LandLine is irrelevant to me. I have a Femtocell/Gateway/Sure signal [whatever U wanna call it] so full singal all round!

  7. Loving all the enthusiastic stuff below about binning land lines …. as a complete counterbalance to all this, I’m forced to use my fixed line for home working! Despite living nowhere more remote than the wild borderlands of Beckenham and Bromley, I get zero signal at home on the ground floor (and a barely reliable one or two bars, if lucky, upstairs) on all the networks I’ve tried, and on pretty much any device. Outbound calls aren’t even the issue here – being literally out of network coverage unless I’m in the office upstairs means the mobile has to sit upstairs on a windowsill at all times, ringer turned up to max so I don’t miss incoming calls if I’m making a cup of tea. And forget mobile data completely – best I ever get is two bars GPRS – which is, however, a good excuse for deploying wi-fi hotspot number two to better serve next summer’s all-important BBQ Spotify requirements 🙂

  8. I do not have a landline phone plugged into the sockets, no point. Anyone who knows me will have my mobile number and understand that is the best way to make contact either via, email, sms, fb, etc or even an voice call.

  9. When moving house a few months ago I dragged the old landline phone with me. A family member left me a message on it the other day and informed me that the greeting on it still says ‘you have reached…’ and then lists the number from our old house. It probably says a lot that I never updated the greeting, and what’s more, I didn’t care that we had to change landline numbers when we moved. Compare that to how vital it is to retain one’s mobile number when choosing a new mobile deal. I think it’s safe to say we probably don’t need our landline other than for internet.

  10. u could get a vodafone sure signal box to connect to ur home broadband. also  there is a femtocell avalible to use with 3. a sales advisor in the store told me the other day. thats only around £40

  11. OK – done some digging and see it’s a femtocell basically (which is cool – bragging rights around having a domestic femtocell are high!). Totally missed the fact the Voda had launched this a while back. For £50 I’m going to give it a shot. Will let you know how it goes …

  12. I don’t have a phone plugged into my line.  Why bother?  All the phone calls I got were spam from foreign call centres trying to sell me stuff.  So I unplugged it and threw it out.

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