When Was the Last Time You Used a Landline Phone?

This month and this year are the same thing at this point, since it's January. And the last time I used a phone was in December, so none of the options work for me, since it was last year but not over a year.

I still have Plain Old Telephone Service at home, albeit with several fancy wireless handsets scattered around the house. I also have a cherry red corded handset (my wife refers to it as the BatPhone) that I can use when the wireless handsets die, like after a prolonged power outage.

Having this landline, in this configuration, is an intentional decision. It's separate from all my networking stuff, it survives power outages (when I haul out my BatPhone), and it generally works a hell of a lot better than any other technology for voice calls. Calls are clear, don't get dropped, I hear every word, and there is no latency.

I'm keeping my landline, thankyouverymuch

... because when power is out I can still make a call if I need to and report the power outage. While I do have a working cell, within the home the signal blows and I have too many dropped calls. Finally, I've had such a horrible experience with VOIP, I've walked away from it completely.

Rarely for dial-up, fax, etc. Yeah, old school. I rarely use the phones and can't talk and hear well. Internet (IRC, IMs, textings, etc.) is the thing for me. I don't even own a cellphone!

my ADSL came with a landline. something about the bits needing to follow copper...better for long conference calls than a cell phone too, we don't like to hear the switching and static and jumps in volume level that cellular telephony makes

If so, today - I still feel the need for backup (of my cell phone) communications. If that means POTS only, I gave that up a couple of months ago.

I occasionally use the FIOS hard-line. I imagine it's VOIP, because it's not Copper POTS. It runs over fiber and through the FIOS box... if I lose power then I can only use the phone as long as the battery pack is running in the FIOS box.

There was a 3-in-1 (FIOS Internet + TV +Phone) deal when I signed up, that was like $10 less than the 2-in-1 deal (Internet + Phone)

I use it from time to time because the reception in my place isn't full bars... usually between 3 and 4 out of 5. And if I need to make a long long conference call I sometimes prefer to just use that instead of Skype or my mobile.

But, with the exception of conference calls... I maybe use the thing 10 minutes a month.

I'll use my land line forever, much the way I do my Slashdot account.

I have POTS at home, VoIP at work. Like others, my ADSL came with POTS phone service. Dunno.

I have no complaints about the Asterisk-based VoIP setup at work. The call quality is about the same as a cellphone, both for audio quality (G.729 codec) and call setup/drops/etc. It also means I can have a local phone number just about anywhere I want, which makes life much easier when head office (i.e. my boss) is a five hour flight away. It also gives me more stuff I can put on my resume.

...laura

I have a Cisco IP telephone on my desk, it's got a (CAT5) line that goes into the LAN(d) -- does that count? Or are we only talking old-school twister copper? Or maybe operator exchange [thetribunenews.com]?

Specify your terms people!

At work, where I don't have a choice, all the phones are ISDN land lines. I think it will be a long time before those disappear from corporate settings. As for my own home, I have not maintained a land line since I left my parents at age 18. There was one in my dorm room at college, though.

So I have never paid for my own land line, I use one every day at work, and the last time I used one privately was a couple months ago.

If yes, then today. Several times. With video conferencing as well.

If it has to be POTS, then I'd say...15 years ago. At least. Yeah, 1998 sounds about right.

copper twisted-pair POTS here. With a rotary-dial phone no less. One good reason why: In my 45 years on Earth, the old tech has something like nine 9's of availability. It has only gone out *once* that I can recall, in 45 years. That was fixed within 2 hours because a squirrel had chewed thru the old line going into the house. Back when I was like 15 or so.

I've had a cell phone for over ten years, and I've been on Skype for about five years -- but it's good to have a land line as a backup, if only for 911 access.

Then again, the last time I called 911 (my mother-in-law fell and broke her shoulder while helping me clean up my driveway) it was from my cell phone, just because that phone was the closest to hand.

And 90% of the calls I get on the land-line are people wanting to clean my air ducts (I keep telling them I have radiators) or clean my carpets (I keep telling them I have hard-wood floors), but they keep calling.

For me, my answer depends - if you mean "POTS", then oh gosh a year or more? I don't recall. However, I use a VOIP desk phone at work - so it shares the physical attributes of a land line, but not the technological attributes. The whole thing is pure digital as soon as the mic signal is converted in or the final step of digital to analog causes the earpieces to produce sound coming out.

So years or more for POTS, but only this week for a physical phone as opposed to cellular.

The most common interpretation of "this month" and "this year" would have them meaning the same thing. Perhaps if this was the New Year's Day poll, we could get the first four answers all meaning the same thing!

Trying out MagicJack, pretty hopeful at the moment, could drop Uverse phone and pay $40 a year... my contract just came up and right now it's $40 a month...

We are keeping the home phone just because of the kids. I'm not about to buy a 2 and 3 year olds phones, and with another on the way I want to make sure the phone is there without having to remember where you put your cell or if it is charged up or not... this should do that for us at a much cheaper rate. (we hope)

I would like to get rid of our "land line". We're paying $40/month or so for it, but in my view there's little point anymore. My wife, daughter, and I all have cell phones; and I've explained how a VoIP phone could accomplish the same thing while saving us money... but the wife is resistant.

Part of the reason I find the "safety" argument silly is that we, like many other people, now only have wireless handsets for the home phone - so it's not like that'll work when the power goes out! Last time that happened, I had to use my cell phone to call the power company.

On a side note - are any of you (that still have a land line) using home VoIP for your phone? Have you found a provider you're happy with (and one that a technophobe like my lovely wife would be comfortable with)?

Or are we talking about the old fashion copper lines only?

It's something that you get to reduce the price of your Internet access in most of the U.S. (The "bundles" offered by the telcos and cable TV providers here are almost always less expensive that Internet service by itself.)

If you mean "a NANP-numbered phone line that uses a conventional RJ-11-connected telephone to a jack in the wall of a domicile," then yesterday.

But it's connected to a VOIP box that goes through my internet connection...

For a personal POTS/PSTN-connected line, I'd have to go back to 1999. I've only had cellular and VOIP since then. Even when I've had DSL since then, I haven't had a personal POTS line. I did have a POTS business line running to my home until 2010, although the number was forwarded 99% of the time; I think I only ever used the phone when power and internet were both down during storms.

I live in an apartment building and only use the landline to buzz someone in. I am currently using Comcast for the landline service. I have explored getting something else but here is the problem.

You lose the package deal with you remove one of the 3 services. Comcast does this to prevent you from leaving of course. But, the advantage to having the phone service is uptime. VoIP providers (at least here) are required to restore service quickly. If my internet connection is down, I generally get my restored faster than friends. The longest outage I had was like half of a day when someone took out a utility pole.

I've been using VoIP (over cable Internet) for about 7 or 8 years. I believe POTS is not even available where I live now. CenturyLink (Ma Bell remnant) sells VoIP over DSL instead.
So I voted "over 1 year".

My mom normally calls me on the landline, and vice-versa. I prefer the sound quality, and we normally talk when I'm home anyway.

Years. As in, at least half or a full decade.

I am honestly considering getting my own landline service with long distance at some point in the future, though. Cell companies tend to fuck you over on minutes far more, plus the added reliability of a traditional phone line is a plus. But as long as Google Voice VoIP remains free for yet another year, I have no reason to rush. The problem is I have no traditional telephones, so I need to decide on a phone (or phones) to get as well as which service provider and features. I'm not exactly sure where to start, but I probably won't get AT&T since they tend to be among the most expensive. Deciding on the phones themselves will probably be more difficult than the service provider (Sage Telecom seems like a likely candidate).