Has the tipping point finally been reached for the demise of landline telephones?
35.8% of Households Now Cell Only – And 17% of Landline Users Only Get Cell Calls (DSLreports)
If you have parents or grandparents that just can’t give up their old wired telephone, and if they have Internet access you can always get them an Obihai device and set them up with Google Voice. The only thing that stops a lot of people from doing that is that Google Voice won’t port an existing landline number to Google Voice. It is possible to do a two-step process, where you port the landline number to a “throwaway” prepaid cellular phone account, then port it from there to Google Voice, but that doesn’t always work. Still, with the cost of landline service nowadays, that’s kind of a hefty price to pay just so you don’t have to change your existing phone number. In the old days the phone company would give you a new number every time you moved (unless you were moving within the same telephone exchange area), whether you liked it or not, yet nowadays people act as though they simply must keep their existing phone number no matter what the cost, and no matter how many telemarketers have it and use it to harass them at dinnertime. I really don’t get the irrational attachment to a phone number, but it seems that’s what keeps a lot of people on landlines.
Another possibility for a landline alternative is that if you have an Obihai OBi202 with the OBiBT add-on USB device, you can use it with a cell phone so your parents or elderly relatives can still use their existing phones, but the calls will actually go over their cell phone service. You will need to have it connected to a computer to do the configuration, but I think in actual day-to-day use it could work with just the BlueTooth connection to the cell phone (I don’t have an OBiBT nor a phone that has BlueTooth capability, so I can’t say for sure). Most cell providers can port landline numbers, though not in all cases.
Many commercial VoIP providers can port a number directly, though not in all cases (even today, not every phone number can be ported by every provider. You may find that only some providers can port a particular number, or more rarely, that none of them can). Nowadays there are many commercial VoIP providers that charge a lot less than what the phone companies charge.
Anyway there are a lot of ways to avoid landlines nowadays. What a change from even just ten years ago, when commercial VoIP was only starting to take hold! I have a feeling that ten years from now, the landline will be all but dead, except in those rural pockets where absolutely nothing else is available. The phone companies may still be around, if they can ever bring themselves to ditch their old copper and start converting to fiber only, but they’ll be providing primarily broadband service, not traditional phone service.
Related articles
- Over 35% of American households have given up on landlines totally (phonearena.com)
- More Than One-third of U.s. Households Have Completely Ditched Landlines for Wireless (forums.pinstack.com)
- More than one-third of U.S. households have completely ditched landlines for wireless (bgr.com)
mike hangar said
What gets me is that my family members ARE WILLING to pay $40 (and up) bucks monthly for traditional telephone service well “just because”. I’ve given them countless demos on commercial voips like anveo (.005 cents per min) and google voice through obi202, but their rational is, “well we’ve had it for this long sooooo”…
To me, that thought process is not only unbelievably stupid but incredibly irresponsible.
Steve said
For a lot of older people (and younger – with families/young kids), a landline provides a traditional 911 connection to the local police department. Some people have landlines for their home security systems too, I gather.
Fortunately, my family has called 911 three times since we started with Voip service, and gotten through ok, but I still would hate to be responsible for recommending VOIP to someone to save them money knowing that they don’t understand how VOIP is different and how E911 works, should something happen… Ignorance only costs them $40 a month, but should they have a real emergency, getting a quick response is still priceless… I guess you could consider it like any other insurance to some…
Steve said
As far as porting goes, back when I ported my number in 2007, I seem to recall it took 3+ weeks… In 2011, I think it took 11 days.. Earlier this year (2012), I moved a landline to PagePlus Cellular (took 3 days, cost nothing since I had an old unused verizon phone lying around… if I didn’t I could have bought one on ebay for about $20…) and then to Google Voice from PagePlus Cellular (took 1 day, cost the usual $20). So there is a bit of downtime, but all in all not too bad. Last week, I ported my wife’s number from Verizon to Google Voice and that took 24 hours. Every year I see progress in VOIP, and slowly we’re getting more choices in broadband providers in our area. They all have their own “home phone” solutions of course, too… It should be very interesting in 10 years. I imagine by then google voice will not be free any more. VOIP itself will always be inexpensive. My bigger concern is ISPs that carry it may start switching from unlimited pricing models with bandwidth caps to pay-per-GB type models like the Cellular companies. But my hope is the Cellular companies have affordable unlimited home internet hotspots that are a reasonable speed and cheaper than what the cable/dsl/uverse crowd offer me today… Who knows. Tech is always interesting.
michigantelephone said
Steve, the “I need a landline for 911″ argument falls pretty flat as far as I’m concerned, for several reasons. First, if you really want 911 service, it’s possible to use a commercial VoIP provider that offers 911, or even get standalone 911 service (that can be used with a VoIP device) for around a buck a month. Second, it is a myth that landlines are more reliable than VoIP — that was probably true at one time (and probably still is in certain areas), but a lot of traditional phone companies are letting their aging infrastructure deteriorate, particularly in rural areas, and therefore wireline phone service in general is becoming less reliable, plus there have been some spectacular failures of landline 911 service. In contrast, when VoIP companies offer 911 they usually try to take great care to make sure it works because they don’t want to be sued, or have a lot of bad publicity. Of course it can’t work if people fail to keep their address updated when they move, but that’s really not the VoIP provider’s fault. At least YOU know what you have entered as an address, and you’re not trusting a phone company to enter it for you (they don’t always get it right).
But the big reason is that most people have cell phones nowadays and reach for those when they need to call 911. It makes sense to do that, because with a cell phone in you hand, you can try to escape danger while you are talking to the 911 dispatcher. Of course there is the potential for failure there as well, if people forget to keep their phones charged, but there is nothing providers can do about that.
Finally, many people get their “landline” service from a piece of equipment that requires commercial power, whether they realize it or not. This equipment usually has a battery back-up of some kind (which is sometimes not tested regularly and therefore fails when it’s actually needed) but the batteries are generally only good for 8 to 24 hours maximum, and that’s when they’re new. Leave them in a cabinet that’s exposed to the hot summer sun and the freezing cold of winter for a couple of years and it’s pure luck if they work at all. So in any event that causes a major power outage, by the time you actually realize you need help your trusty landline might be nothing but a memory. And the phone companies have succeeded in getting quality-of-service standards relaxed in many places, so if you lose service the worst thing that might happen to them is they pay a small fine and maybe give you a credit for the duration of the outage (but you’ll probably have to raise a stink to get the credit).
It’s your choice to make, as with any piece of “safety” equipment. Some people go waaaay overboard on safety, and paying a ridiculous price for a landline just because you hope 911 will be available when you need it falls into that category as far as I am concerned, but if you don’t feel that way, feel free to THROW your money away! Your local ripoff phone company will appreciate it, and so will the home invader who finds it so convenient to whip out his trusty knife and sever your connection to help before he breaks into your home.
Charles Young said
Traditional phone companies are hindered by archaic rules that artificially raise the cost of their service. The lawmakers could have changed the rules to allow rates and services to be competitive, but as usual, those that realized the need for changes were powerless to do anything about it in a timely manner.
The blue tooth to Google Voice linking to a cordless or old wired phone is a good idea, but would not work for many people. GV (and cell phones) only give you 30 seconds to answer the phone before going to voice mail. A GV call may only ring the callers phone for 20 seconds before going to voice mail due to a delay between when the call seems to be ringing and when the phone actually rings. Maybe that is enough time to answer the call if you have a phone on your belt or in your pocket, but it is not nearly enough time to walk to the other room and pick up a traditional phone. It seems that Google could allow users to set their own time that the phone would ring before the call goes to voice mail, but so far that does not seem to be on their radar.
I suspect the reason that GV is free is because when they start charging for service they will have to provide 911 service, and they may have to comply with other expensive regulations.