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Why do people have a cell phone and a landline phone?

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Edited

We got rid of our landline more than 10 years ago and haven’t missed it. I know some people still have both and I was just wondering why.

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Well the reasons are many. First off you will get better sound connection through a landline, or less chance of sound distortion/interference using a phone line. Secondly I believe you have more (audio range - soft to loud) on a landline phone then a cell phone. Maybe that’s not important to someone with a mild to mid-range hearing loss. Might be important to someone with a severe hearing loss. Land line phones for several years have offered captioned verbal display which far exceeds anything offered on a cell phone. Lastly, you don’t need to charge a landline phone in a charger every night. It works 24-7, unless there is a major power outage.

Add all that up and the “subtract” for monthly phone line charge. To each his own.

If you are far from civilization, a satellite phone might come in handy. But a landline phone? Nah! no need for one in 2020.

I have poor cell phone reception and I depend on my landline . My older Phonak Ventures have which works in both ears simultaneously. The Marvel telecoil only worked in 1 ear or the other but not together. I loved the Marvels Bluetooth but returned them because I couldn’t hear properly in my landline. I need the landline dual telecoil. Any suggestions for new hearing aids that have Bluetooth and dual telecoil ?

For me it’s largely because I don’t want to carry a phone all the time. Landline has better sound quality (reception doesn’t cut in and out and I feel it handles full duplex much better than cell does) Mine is only a few dollars a month since I use Ooma (VOIP). I have a cell phone but I tell people not to call unless we’re trying to coordinate meeting somewhere. IF you like you’re having your phone with you all the time, I can see where no reason to have landline. Some people are required to have (or at least pay for) a land line to get internet service.

My wife is old fashion she would not think about not having a landline. She does call forward the home phone to her cell phone when she leaves the house. Her cellphone number is given only to close family and a very few friends. Personally I can here over the landline except for using the speaker phone, so I use my cell phone for everything

In reply to @hold4triple

@hold4triple said:

Well the reasons are many. First off you will get better sound connection through a landline, or less chance of sound distortion/interference using a phone line.

That’s not my experience. My inability to hear on landline phones forced me to give up on all phone conversations I could avoid. I only kept the line so I could call 911 if ever necessary. Hearing aids did not help with the problem. Cell service is not good in my rural area, but when I found AT&T was passable here and got my first smartphone, I was surprised I could hear most voices with it and cancelled the landline.

from the phone to hearing aids improved things even more, but I didn’t use that much until I got the KS9s and didn’t need to bother with an intermediate device.

Edited

Well if I had a dime for every time I saw someone move (with a cell phone) to a certain certain part of a home for better reception or go outside - I could have retired very, very wealthy. Sorry but if you have a hearing loss you do way better with a special amplified phone (with or without a ) using a land line. Now throw in the “streaming” part to someone HA’s and I’ll leave up to the HA user. In fact a good wireless connection to someone’s aid probably could match or beat a landline since the sound goes directly to your ear canal. But there are still going to be spots/locations where a connection is strong and other spots where the connection will fade. The freedom though to move around and use your cell phone where ever you want is a very big plus.

Cell towers do go down in things like hurricanes. That’s when a landline shines. When power goes out the landline usually has a battery back up that holds for a couple days if no generator supports the system.

Agree and also its kind of hard to lose a “land line phone” sitting on your desk or attached to a kitchen wall. Of course no one ever loses a cell phone.

If you guys find keeping a landline worth the cost, no one’s trying to stop you. I just said for me the landline became worthless. (I tried amplified phones. They do exactly what they claim to - amplify, and as mentioned in the thread here about trying to get people with normal hearing to understand hearing loss, merely making speech louder doesn’t help one understand it.)

As I said, I live in a rural area. My landline was down more than any cell phone I’ve had. Nothing to do with batteries but with service. I now have 2 cells in case one has a problem in an emergency and keep both charged. I don’t get good service in this area, 2 bars is it, but I’ve never had a problem talking to anyone anywhere in my house or yard unless the person on the other end is driving/moving around, which is all that matters to me.

I absolutely love what the KS9s do with phone calls.

Maye some of this has to do with type of loss. Mine is pretty flat, not the more typical high frequency only.

I only have a landline. No cell phone. Several of my friends also don’t bother with a cell phone. They are expensive for the unit, which it seems you have to keep upgrading, and then the monthly contract is pricey. The buttons are small, it is impossible to hit the correct sequence of buttons first time around. The sound quality is horrible.

You want me, call the landline, if I am not there leave a message on my answering machine, I’ll ring you back when I get home. I never understood the voice mail thing. First you have to dial a 10 digit number; then enter a PIN code; next hit the right button to tell it you want to hear messages. I hit one button and my messages play. I don’t have time to waste on all the button pressing, then factor in that the buttons are so small (see above) that I won’t get the thing I want on my first try. If I decide to spend the night out, I can call in and get my messages, same as with voice mail, so that is not unique either. I have more important things to do in my life than deal with that nonsense.

We have both at the moment. Since the NBN went through Aus it only works when it wants to. The only reason we still have it is because of elderly parents who don’t have a mobile. But that said I can’t hear on the landline anyhow, so I simply don’t use it at all. I always use my mobile.

Oh, I forgot - one other reason I have no regrets about dumping the landline is that 99% of the calls I got were begging for money, trying to sell stuff I didn’t want, or political b.s. That’s in spite of being on no call lists. Of course I had that number for close to 50 years, so there was plenty of time for it to spread to all those creeps.

I got a new number with the cell phone and don’t get anything like the trash calls on it, but I get enough of them I rarely use the hearing aid buttons to answer calls. If whoever’s calling isn’t in my contact list, I don’t answer. (I tried some apps mentioned in this forum that supposedly announce the name of the caller if it’s in your contact list, but none of them worked for me.)

As to cell cost, since I don’t use the phone that much, my cell phones have always been Tracfones. The first smart phone I got was $99 to buy and came with a year’s service and enough minutes for a year for me. I still have that phone as a backup, but I bought a newer model listed as compatible with the KS9 bluetooth when I got the KS9s. I paid as I remember $120 for the phone. I get a one-year renewal with more minutes, texts, and data than I use in a year for less than $100, and it costs me about $50 a year to keep the backup active.

That wouldn’t work for someone who streams or uses a phone a lot, but it’s fine for me.

As to voice mail, the next phone I buy must have the option of a customizable voice mail message, so I can say, "DO NOT leave a message. Send a text. I hear people well enough to talk to them, but voice mail is often just a garble.

I’ve got a cell phone. But most of the time for mobile internet only. I don’t want to talk on the phone as long as I am outside my house at all. If something is important then write me a message or leave a voice mail on my landline.
We have children. They often have any appointment, e.g. at the doctor. Why should my wife get all those calls? Or why should only I get all those calls. At home any of us picks up the landline phone whoever is actually available. There are some who don’t need to talk to a specific person of us but to any of the household. Secondly cell phone receiption within our house is very bad. Outside it is ok.
We don’t pay extra for landline phone. We pay for wired/fibered internet. So why drop the phone?

I can’t remember if I used landline phone 5 times in my life after I’ve started high school. Moving out of parents’ meant that I didn’t even had a landline. Living in cities, good coverage.

If I move out of city and mobile phone reception isn’t good, I’ll buy landline, but otherwise, no need for it.

Internet is cable, I think we now even got some phone number, but who knows where it is :joy:

My parents (close to 70s) cancelled their landline few years ago because everyone who need them would call them on mobile anyway.

And price between mobile numbers were lower or non existent, while towards landline held up for quite some time. So people started using mobiles more.

It may be luxury, but I’m keeping my landline. I find the digital compression on many cell calls annoying. Although the voice quality seems good for brief period, I get “listener fatigue” on longer calls, probably because my brain tires of filling in spaces the compression discards and the higher the network traffic the more compression, it seems. I find the same is true of digitally compressed recordings. I tire after a while listening to compressed MP3 files. Loss-less formats fare much better but nothing seems to satisfy my analog ears better than analog sound. I know my landline calls (VoIP) are digitally processed but much less than on my cellphone. An electrical engineer friend of mine told a story of a sound demo he heard at a National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) convention that routed an audio source through several stages of digital processing (compression and decompression). While after each level of processing sounded pretty good, after going through several levels it became un-listenable. How many processors does a cellphone-to-cellphone conversation undergo, and then our hearing aids need to process it yet again? Less is sometimes more.

In reply to @Raudrive

I’ve been through a dozen hurricanes and tropical storms. In my neck of the woods, the land lines fare the same as cell, and in most cases, cells were back up before landlines.

I dropped my landline 15 years ago when it had an issue and ATT told me it would be 3 months before they could fix it.

I am not attached to my cell phone. The sheer convenience of having a “landline” virtually available in many rooms is handy, I even have one in the garage when I am working out there. I don’t know of a way to leave 6+ cellphones around the house to all work from the same phone #? It costs me all of $6 a month including LD calls with Ooma service over my Internet service so it has that dependency now as well.

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