Who needs a landline in the age of mobile phones?

Is Ben Stevens ever going to put his head above the parapet and come back to this conversation he started with his provocative [and un-consumer-ist] comments? So many excellent reasons for having a landline have been given by other participants but here are a couple of further thoughts: 1. The home security company uses the landline for their fault monitoring and intrusion detection system. 2. The electricity for my landline services is supplied by BT and has never, ever, failed whereas I have to recharge my mobile phone every day; we get quite a few power cuts in Norfolk and I do not want to put my emergency communication facility in jeopardy. Furthermore there is no doubt that a call to the emergency services from a landline will always be supeior in terms of speed of connection, speed of fixing location, and clarity of reception. The mobile phone is vital when out and about; indeed, I have had to use it on a few occasions for emergency calls but found the signal strength and transmission quality unreliable. And another thing … I actually rather like sitting down with the telephone instrument and an appropriate beverage to speak to people, whether they are friends, relatives, or just call centre clerks, and I am probably less irritable with cold callers than I would be if they caught me on my mobile phone.

My home phone hasnt rung since 2003. Ahh…brings back memories now. I remember the moment it last rang really well, it was a bloke who could bearly read the script he had in front of him offering me a free quote on some new windows. Was a welcome distraction from the film I’d been watching at the time.

Ben Steven’s you talk alot of sense.

It would be a total wipe-out for us without a land line. We have no mobile signal anywhere in the village.
I contacted my mobile provider and asked them why. Their reply was that there were plenty of masts around the area and that there are no plans to do anything more for us. We have a similar problem with TV signals. So despite being the first area to go digital everyone has had to pay for a satellite connection. However we can’t do that with a phone. Please don’t remove land lines.

As I don’t have a mobile signal where I live, my landline phone is absolutely essential!!

……and no-one has yet touched upon the greatest bugbear of this idea – 0800, 0845 and 0870. These calls are *not* free from landlines and rarely “the cost of a local call”. If you don’t have a land-line, the price you pay for these numbers is the “Through The Nose” price!! 40p a minute is possible on some carriers. Makes hold music expensive…….
We have a land-line for emergencies (nod of head to the power-cut issue), VoIP phones (cordless so all around house) for land-line *and* overseas calls, and mobiles for texting, surfing and calls as well – which end up mostly being person to person as opposed to house-to-house. Skype also features here. There is only one corded phone in the house – next to the main exit for emergency use only. It feels quite peculiar to use I must say.

The point I want to make concerns the ability to use a telephone during a power cut – when the need to dial 999 might be greater than normal because of related problems. This could be a normal power cut to one’s street or a more local loss of power within one’s home due to an accident inside or from vehicle impact.
The point then is that a landline with a corded telephone may be the only way to make a phone call since such phones are powered in any case from the exchange.* But cordless phones are inoperative during a power cut – because the base unit has to be powered for the wireless system to work. Similarly calls made via broadband need the PC to be powered (so I believe). I suspect that, despite the increasing use of cordless phones, most people are not aware of this limitation.
So every house ought to have (at least) one normal corded phone – and that all adults ought to be informed that only it will work during a power cut.

A mobile phone should of course be usable for making a 999 call – ie, assuming that its battery has sufficient charge and that all the repeater stations in the communication chain remain powered.

There seems to be no point in taking a risk, however small, when much could be at stake.

All I can say is that people who think they can survive without a landline must have better and more reliable mobile reception than anyone I know. I certainly wouldn’t ditch my landline. If you have to dial 999 it’s always best to use a landline, your address will automatically appear on the operator’s computer which could save vital time.

I couldn’t get by for long without my landline. As a number of people have mentioned services like Sky require it for updating, movies, etc. Aside from this the only family members who have reasonable phone reception at home are my parents – and they are of a generation who forget where they left the mobile/don’t have it charged/forget to switch it on.

My sister lives near the centre of Winchester and has a tiny bit of mobile reception if she leaves her mobile on the kitchen window ledge – but that disappears the minute she picks the phone up from the window ledge. I live in city centre Glasgow and have great reception if I stand in the street but if I walk into my traditional Glasgow tenement flat the reception disappears unless I stand with my face pressed up against the window. It seems that these big, old, solid, tenement buildings often have this problem and mobile networks just don’t cope with this easily. This isn’t just down to local coverage but the capability of the signal to get inside my house!

My sister and I do tend to reach for the mobile first to make calls but reception indoors where we each live makes that impossible.

Like one of the other posters I have the Which? recommended Siemens Gigaset cordless phones which mean you’re never tied to the wall.

I wouldn’t want to rely on mobile signals for my broadband connection so have a landline for this too – as I suspect most people do.

I believe landlines will be here for many years yet – although the proportion of voice calls made might change in favour of data (sky, broadband, etc).

Look around you — how many mobiles are TOYS to the user? Many older people perhaps can’t afford the exhorbitant price and the call charges too, as well as handling them. For business use they are undoubtedly great. But I believe overall use statist might make interesting viewing. And don’t forget they are subject to reception, a mobile’s no good if you can’t use it! Long live landlines.

Call on mobiles are routed through the landline network. All mobile networks use a gateway . No landline network no mobile phones. Its the backbone of the service. Parts of the call are done by masts and radiowaves. People asume its all wireless …. no. Also voice quality cant beat landline quality. No credit or power and a mobile is useless. Ever listen to a caller on the radio on a landline compared to a overcompressed mobile speech codec?. Calls connect quicker on a lindline too. 99.9% OF LANDLINE calls get a dialtone first time. How many time do you get a network busy message on your mobile. Also mobile networks overload with a slight spike in usage. Also mobile networks are not sesure the gsm encryption keys have been broke. Ppl who work in banks and credit unions where i live cant use mobile dealing with work related calls dealing with accounts and funds.

Why dont mobile phone providers offer you broad band aswell without having a land line 75% to 90% of people in the uk have mobiles so why should we be forced to get a land line if i was a mobile phone company i would look at this as there is a lot of people who have mobile and never use the land line it cost more in rent than my mobile does a month .

Nothin lasts for long joni mitchell.

I’m going back to using a landline telephone. I haven’t had a landline phone before but I’ve considered getting one for some time now. As part of an ‘add-on’ with Talk Talk, I will now be getting it connected. The main reason why I’m fed up with my mobile phone is the reception and the number of dropped calls. On some occasions during a call I can barely hear what’s been said or the interference is too disruptive. Then on other occasions I can be chatting and the call just cuts off.

For me the landline still has a place and the over-reliance on mobile phones will be detrimental during emergencies, particularly during power cuts.

I plan to purchase a corded phone for the reason that during a power cut I’ll know that it will work and I’ll know where to find it!!