Old Fashioned Phone originally uploaded by Daniel Catt
Last week’s poll asked about how you shared information on social networks. The majority responded that they keep it ‘private’ but there was some discussion about how some respondents really don’t have any thing to hide, something I consider naive at best.
This week’s poll comes after another several days of intermittent downtime for both my Internet connection (affecting the website) and also my phone as they are both handled by Charter Business. This particular issue started back in August and ran for about 10 days before it resolved itself (or through their intervention, I’m not sure which) but has resurfaced again in the last three days. Charter was out 4 or 5x the last time it happened and has already been out once for this one. If it doesn’t stop I’ll start having them come out daily again until it gets fixed as this is unacceptable.
But some may ask, “it’s just Internet,” right? Well, in our case we still have a landline, even though it comes over the cable line and my wife uses that as her main means of telephone connectivity. I know that plenty of others have made the full on switch to using their mobiles for their main telephone line but we just can’t do that. So the question here today is what do you use for your main phone connection to the outside world?
Do you still use a traditional landline or other similar alternative (like we use through Charter’s crappy service?) Do you use a mobile instead or have you given up telephone service all together since no one except telemarketers, scammers, and politicians use it anymore? If you have given it up how long ago did you decide to make the switch and how many minutes do you go through a month?
Whatever you have to say about this one vote on the sidebar and then comment on below. After you do both of those things feel free to check out our expired polls in the archive or read through the previous posts about polls here.
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October 16th, 2011 at 8:02 am
Both! Finally got a cell phone in March. Texting is the best part with that, largely due to how bad the sound quality is on cells. Kept a really stripped down version of the landline (can’t call out long distance, but can receive them). Kept it partly because the sound quality is sooooo much better, partly because we’re thinking about adding a security system and would need a landline for that. Also handy how our fabulous vintage rotary phone has always still worked for us during power outages.
October 16th, 2011 at 8:46 am
We gave up our land line somewhere around 12 years (and four residences and two states) ago. Haven’t looked back since! Additionally, after our cross country move last year I have kept my MN phone number (after all this time it’s MINE) and don’t intend to switch to an OR one. We use a very small percentage of the talk time minutes, maybe 10%?, (three phones on a family plan) with the most important thing being we have unlimited text and data.
October 16th, 2011 at 8:46 am
I’ve had Vonage for a long time. The last straw was a typical month of Frontier phone service (traditional landline) that included 2 calls to New York, and the bill was over $100.00. Other than those calls to home, I don’t use my home phone for very much, so that was starting to get to be too much. I decided at that time, enough was enough, and switched. My Vonage plans includes a virtual number that’s in my parent’s area code in New York, so when they call me, they’re making a local call. My monthly bill, with the virtual line added on, is about $35.
In the last 6 weeks or so, there have been a bunch of times that I’ve come home to discover my internet connection has dropped (I have Charter as well) and so I have to re-boot routers, computers, etc. No a big deal, but a pain in the butt. I think it’s time we start thinking about internet service as an essential utility, like gas & electricity, and start treating it as such, and holding the providers to a higher level of service.
October 16th, 2011 at 8:49 am
I haven’t had a landline in my adult life. Not since college, when they gave you one in the dorms. Now, as I get ready to send a cousin off to college, they don’t even provide landlines in the dorms.
October 16th, 2011 at 9:37 am
We still have and use our landline. But, we’re about to jump on the smart-phone wagon and I’m guessing we’ll drop the LL at some point.
As to Charter: Yes, they are a very mediocre ISP at best. Anyone who uses them and is on-line more than an hour a day sees drops, email problems, on-and-on. It seems to be on the internet side only. The cable TV doesn’t have the same frequency of problems, although it does have it’s problems. When the internet side drops our phone still works (it’s Charter too), so that tells me the problem is in the servers at the head-end, more than likely software issues.
My sympathies are with anyone who is financially dependent on Charter for an ISP. One institution I’m affiliated with has been fighting them for solutions to email problems for months – they won’t or can’t fix it. And, like Bill, this is the Charter-Business entity. Hell of a way to run a business.
Right on, Greg, right on!
October 16th, 2011 at 10:15 am
No landline. And every phone call I make can be put in one of three categories: working from home, talking to my parents, or 911. Except 911, I can go weeks without talking on the phone.
As to your comment that someone may think “it is just internet” I say oh no, it is THE INTERNET. When the internet is down, life is down. I can’t work from home, I can’t watch TV, soon I won’t be able to listen to music. The internet is everything when I’m home alone. I’d have to read a book or something. :)
October 16th, 2011 at 10:57 am
Interesting… I’m in the middle of preparing for a switch off of a land line to full time cellular. I’ll pickup a google voice number to use for those businesses where if they call we want two cell phones to ring. Down side is mobile handsets are not really geared towards long conversations on the couch. So I’ll be adding a wired headset for the wife’s cell phone.
I’m also paying close attention to the roll out of LTE and the performance levels being reported. I can see a future where my internet comes via a mifi device.
A can see a time.. (see our 4th quarter book club selection) where internet service is guaranteed by the government. They have ISP’s fighting them now, but it seems the goal of the FED is to have nationwide wireless internet in the future.
October 16th, 2011 at 11:39 am
This is the site’s 2000th post!
October 16th, 2011 at 12:06 pm
I couldn’t stomach paying $60 a month for a landline with a sub-standard speed Internet circuit. So I dumped that, and we’re exclusively cell currently. However, when our son gets a little older, I might spring for the $10 a month Vonage basic service, just for 911 service.
I’m not a huge fan of wireless anything for Internet service. As a person who’s thoroughly tested all the current 4G and 3G cell data service, it’s not ready for prime time replacement of DSL or Cable. It’s latency is way too high for anything that would be dependent on voice. Everybody rants and raves about Verizon’s LTE service, but I’m very disappointed in it’s reliability and speed.
October 16th, 2011 at 12:09 pm
Nils, and max allowable downloads. Unless they can match Comcast’s fairly low standard of 250GB a month then it’s a joke. Last time I checked LTE was going to be about 5GB but may be 10. I burn through that much easily on my phone alone.
October 16th, 2011 at 1:42 pm
Huh, what a surprise. Just lost my Charter internet a little while ago for no reason.
October 16th, 2011 at 3:12 pm
All we have is cell phones and almost everyone else we know does too. The only people I know with land lines tend to live in a place where cell reception isn’t great or isn’t consistent, or they had land lines before so they just keep maintaining them.
October 16th, 2011 at 6:46 pm
I just received a new iphone4S Friday and I love. It is my 3rd smartphone. Previously i had a Blackberry Curve. We gave up our landline about 10 years ago, changing that Frontier number to my Wife’s very basic cell which is just what she wanted, no Internet, no frills, big buttons. I have Sprint with unlimited everything and our combined bill runs just under $100 per month. I get and send about 75 to 100 emails per day and have no complaints. I have very fast 99% reliable Internet through Charter.
October 16th, 2011 at 8:53 pm
I gave up my landline 6 years ago, but in retrospect should have done it at least a couple of years before that. I upgraded to the iPhone 4s from a Blackberry Pearl on Friday and couldn’t be happier with it.
I still talk on the phone quite a bit (as a 2 hour conversation with my sister this morning will attest), so I’m glad to have the unlimited to any mobile part of the plan.
I also have a google voice number that I give to people that I don’t really want to talk to.
October 17th, 2011 at 7:06 am
I’ve got a alarm system that needs a land line to work so unless I want to go with a new alarm system (cell based) for about $1500.00 or so i’m stuck with it for now.
October 17th, 2011 at 7:15 am
N52,
Wouldn’t the mobile phone version pay for itself in less than three years or is it similarly priced per month as the landline?
The $11 we pay as part of our bundle for landline service is far cheaper than another mobile plan for The Wife but if you’re only using the landline for one service it seems like an unnecessary expense.
October 17th, 2011 at 8:06 am
We have a landline and had thought about giving it up, but then an incident next door changed my mind. Our next door neighbor’s cell phone died and they needed to call 911, fortunately for them we were home (it was during the day when a lot of the neighbors are at work). How can you call 911 if your phone stops working? Like Bill, we bundle so the monthly charge is low and for me worth my piece of mind.
October 17th, 2011 at 8:10 am
Bill:
It’s an additional $12.00 per month in addition to the regular “monitoring charges”.
We will get there eventually as the current system is from 1988 and replacement parts are no longer available. There is one lone service tech in the local office that has any knowledge of that particular alarm system so I would imagine that our alarm will be retired at same time as he retires.
October 17th, 2011 at 8:41 am
Bill- There are usage limits, even on LTE? I thought the whole point of a fast broadband network is that it should remove the need for capping?
If that’s the case, then I believe Sprint is the only true unlimited, mobile data network left…
October 17th, 2011 at 9:50 am
Currently, in the USA, mobile providers highly limit data usage. Only Sprint has unlimited data, and they are rumored to be reconsidering that. I currently have an unlimited data plan with Verizon, though that was phased out and is no longer available. Last I checked, Verizon has 75mb, 2gb($30/m), 5gb($50/m), 10gb($80/m) plans. Note these numbers are GigaBytes, not gigabits. (i.e. most data rates quoted are as giga bits per second) Until these artificial caps are removed, transitioning to a wireless internet solution for all needs is simply not possible for many people.
Maybe back in the 80′s, when the internet was designed around dial up connection speeds. But these days, everything expects high bandwidth, and more and more technologies expect you don’t need to meter your data usage.
One interesting thing to note. As various municipalities work to build out their own wireless area network they often run into significant legal action from local cable providers in an attempt to stop what they feel is unfair competition. Yet, as cellular networks build out services that ideally could be significant competition to cable providers, there is no peep? Why? Good question.
October 17th, 2011 at 9:56 am
Just so you know, an average 42 minute TV episode streamed over 3G on my mobile device hovers between 300 and 400MB. According to some other articles I’ve read the average Netflix streaming user racks up around 40GB in usage a month.
This article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/looming-threat-for-netflix-charging-consumers-for-data-use/2011/07/26/gIQAqTSmbI_story.html claims that in order to max out Comcast’s 250GB limit (which BTW I’m told you get one warning before they permanently cancel your account if you go over it) you would only need to stream one HD movie a day for the month.
October 17th, 2011 at 11:48 am
I’m mobile-only, though I acknowledge that having a landline is useful in certain situations. Been that way for a few years now, and only kept my landline as long as I did because I was getting broadband through the phone company and they required it (they don’t anymore, so I’m looking at switching back to them).
I typically use 300-350 MB a month of data on my smartphone, since I don’t view video on it and only occasionally use it for streaming music — I typically just use it for email and the web. I have the lowest phone and texting plans they would let me get, and never get anywhere close to hitting the limits.
October 17th, 2011 at 11:52 am
Bill,
That doesn’t surprise me one bit. The software I have on my router tracks my bandwidth usage daily for one month. Last month I believe I used about 225GB. I don’t think I even watched the equivalent to a full-length movie per day in HD. However, my wife does use it during the day, so that might be it. Either way, 250GB seems really low, and I’m not sure if Charter has a similar usage cap. I should probably look at the TOS.
October 17th, 2011 at 11:56 am
Nils, Charter is also 250GB
From here: http://beta.charter.com/customers/support.aspx?supportarticleid=2124
October 17th, 2011 at 11:58 am
Well, looks like I exceeded the 100GB threshold very handily. I only have the 12Mbps Express service. :-/
October 17th, 2011 at 11:58 am
Or more than likely 100GB although I don’t know what those levels mean.
October 17th, 2011 at 8:57 pm
The levels are your package. I believe that Express is their “standard” I.e. my bill shows “Internet Service” as one line item and then “Internet Plus Upgrade” as a second line item. This was part of some new customer package, which I am looking to now downgrade. But if it drops me into somewhere that I’ll hit a cap if I start doing more streaming, I dunno. These artificial caps are ridiculous.
Looking at my router data for the month, I’ve currently used up about 60GB of download. I may have streamed 4 or 5 HD movies early in the month when I was checking out a new service from Dish Network. If that were to become a regular thing to do, I can see a real problem with just the Express service.
arggg
October 17th, 2011 at 9:12 pm
I use a mobile phone only. My gf uses mobile mostly, but does have a landline for when she talks with her parents, who live overseas.
October 24th, 2011 at 11:44 am
The wife and I currently use smartphones and supplement data charges with WiFi at home as well. After reading all this I’m a little worried about caps as well.
We’ve also got 3 young children and I’m just beginning to think about what to keep at the house for them when they’re old enough for that sort of thing (which won’t be old enough for their own cellphone). I started thinking about it as we started searching for sitters, some neighborhood kids don’t have their own cellphones which worried me to the point they weren’t ‘hired’.