Why I still have a land-line

| 1 Comment

There are reasons.

  1. Inertia. I've always had one, so the habit is there.
  2. Totally free conference calling. When parents call, just pick up the extension. No need to burn double minutes, no mucking around with speaker-phone. Great!
  3. It gives us an 'us' number. We each have our own cells for getting each of us individually, but sometimes we need an us number. Like for the landlord, or utilities, or or or.
  4. It's yet enother number to put into PagerDuty. If I really need to get up at 4am, making that phone ring is a good way to do it, especially since it's impossible to put it to Vibrate or Airplane Mode.
  5. I share a house with a cell-phone resister. They have one, but only use it as a portable internet connection not a voice communications device. They'll probably drop the phone and go with an iPad and a SIM card when the time comes. That person will need a phone number.

Conference-calling, I tell you.

1 Comment

I mostly agree with all of those reasons. My main reasons are slight variants of a couple of yours, but here you go:
6.) 911 calls - If my young (pre-phone age) child is the only one home with me and I fall ill, and he/she cannot get into my phone because of the code lock, he/she can still call 911
7.) 911 calls again - I worked for a phone company in the past, so I know how mobile 911 "works" and how telco 911 *works*.
8.) I give my land line # to all shipping companies, service workers (you know, contractors, electricians, fertilizer people, etc.), so if it falls in the wrong hands, I don't care.

Ii simply never answer the darned thing. I bought a modern phone set(after years of just a "phone") and not it announces callers throughout the house, actually integrates with our cell phones (bluetooth so you can use either to call to/from the other).

I might just have a land line long enolugh for them to come back into style...

;)