Ditching Landlines In Middle America

from the who-needs-wires? dept

Fri, Aug 2nd 2002 1:47pm — Mike Masnick

There have been plenty of stories before about people (mostly young people) ditching their landlines in exchange for mobile phones. These stories always seem to focus on some uber-geeks in Silicon Valley. However, now that it's reaching Des Moines, Iowa, I think it's becoming a trend. I certainly know more and more people who only use a mobile phone. I have no idea what the landline phone numbers are for most of my friends who have both. It seems clear that more and more people are discovering that they simply don't need a landline.

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3 Comments

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supabeast, 2 Aug 2002 @ 4:35pm

Why I did...
Biggest reason for ditching my landline:Money!

Cellular long distance fees are generally lower, if not free for those of us who only use our wireless long distance minutes at certain times of day.

On top of that, the locale I live in has a nasty local tax of at least $8/month on local phone service. I'll be damned if they are going to tax my phone bill for a county that needs money to pay for and endless list of social services for an exploding population of illegal immigrants.
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SB, 4 Aug 2002 @ 6:38am

The ONLY rub
I have wanted to do this for a long time, but what do I do about home internet access? this is the ONLY reason I have a home phone line, and this inefficiency it bothers me..How can I go purely mobile? Use a library computer once a a day? too much hassle!
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steve snyder, 4 Aug 2002 @ 4:20pm

static phone number
Though it was recently pushed back by a year (which is a crying shame) by Nov. of 2003, all mobile carriers will be required to give the option for customers to keep old phone numbers from other carriers. This is about the last legitimate reason to keep a land line that I can think of. Of course there will still be people who stick with their land line just because they're comfortbile and don't like change.
I would like to see vibrating batteries come standard on all phones--I think most people will use them & turn the ringers off in quiet public places, but they're too cheap to fork over extra cash for one.
steve
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