Could you live without a landline phone?

Update: more on the decline of landlines in the UK

Inspired by Dan’s post, I’ve been giving this some thought recently. While my initial thought was ‘yes’ there are a number of obstacles which I’d need to overcome in order to ‘cut the cord’:

Broadband internet

At home, I have an ADSL connection, which uses BT’s OpenReach phone line infrastructure. In order to use ADSL, you have to pay line rental for the phone line — and as a result, you get a landline phone. In order to eliminate the landline from the mix altogether, I’d have to switch to a cable internet provider.

Verdict: doable

Landline phone number

I don’t actually use the landline number provided as part of the telephone package — instead, I have a Skype online number.

In the office, however, we have a variety of landline numbers. Moving these to Skype isn’t possible at the moment, unfortunately, though setting up our own VoIP system might be.

Verdict: doable, but trickier

Calling

For UK calls, I use my mobile. For international calls, I use Skype. Simple.

Verdict: no change here

Of course, there are some other issues. Emergency calling is one — though it seems to crop up a lot more in discussions in the US than it does in the UK. I suspect people in the UK are much more comfortable using mobiles for 999 calls than our Stateside cousins.

Dan’s post on the subject addresses some of these in more detail, and Dean Bubley’s post has some interesting stats:

Perhaps unsurprisingly, shared-adult homes (eg students living in the same household) are very high on the wireless-only scale, compared with families. Similarly (and probably overlapping) renters are more wireless-centric than homeowners. And there is also a preponderance of low-income and ethnic members of this category.

There’s also frequent discussion of landline dependency on the Skype 3.X public chat hosted by our friends over at Skype Journal.

Comments

Sadly a cable service is pants compared to a landline. I have eight fixed IP addresses on my ADSL over landline and I'd lose them by switching to cable which would have a dynamic address.

Having said that although I have to pay for a landline phone I never use it - nothing wrong with my mobile with loads of free minutes and my 3 Skypephone

The only thing that would stop me getting rid of a landline altogether is the 999 thing, too many things can go wrong with a mobile phone (lack of signal, no batteries, lost in the sofa).

@mountroadcomputers surely there are cable services which will give you static IP addresses? Not that I've checked, but if there aren't then I'm sure there's a business opportunity there

@tobeon.co.uk Not feeling comfortable relying on a mobile for emergency calling seems to be a deal breaker in this debate - I agree that it's pretty critical, though.

At the moment you get a landline phone with your broadband connection, but this isn't the case in some countries and might change here one day.

I understand that 'naked broadband' is on offer in Brazil (from Net Servicios), AT&T have agreed to provide it in the USA, and it was due to available in Switzerland from April this year. In the UK ofcom appears to be sitting on its hands and leaving it to market forces (http://www.ofcom.org.uk/media/mofaq/telecoms/voip_faq/)...

Thanks for that link - this is the key paragraph:

Ofcom believes, at present, that it is a matter for operators and service providers in the market to assess the need from consumers for new products, such as naked DSL.

Is there sufficient demand, do you think?

Our family (2 adults and 4 kids) has been without a landline for over 2 years and we live in a rural setting. We primarily use our cell phones and Skype for business calls. If Skype would offer caller id to US users then we've probably use Skype primarily for residential as well. Even with our lower bandwidth using WISP we still find that Skype works well enough.

I have got rid of my land line and tool the plunge into Skype. Purchased a DualPhone 3088 so that I don't have to have the PC on when trying to make a call. After 4 months I am thinking of reverting back to a land line and cancelling my 12 month subscription to Skype. Numerous call quality issues, but the biggest problem is customer service. I rarely get a reply back from them and when I do, it's a stock answer from the "Sent this reply" manual. They are never helpful and by the time they get back you, you've managed to solve the problem or it's "magically" disappeared. Until Skype resolves this issue I think non technical users will never switch over from a land line, plus at the time of disconnect my cable provider slashed my line rental from £11 per month to £2 per month so I don't think price is even an issue any more. Am regretting turning the offer down!!!!

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