Parting with an Old Friend—The Landline

We recently gave up our landline. We had that phone number for many years, since the kids were little. It was sad to see it go—but somewhat liberating. 

I resisted parting with our landline for years. My reasoning was that in an emergency (especially a catastrophic one), our cellphones might not work. 

I kept a hard-wired phone in the basement in case both the cell service and electricity were out. A cordless phone won’t work without electricity, but a hard-wired phone will. How many times did I use that phone in the basement? Never. Might need to use it someday? Yes.

Husband Jim had chiseled our landline’s services down to only Caller ID. We didn’t have call-waiting anymore, so if we were on the phone (rarely), an incoming caller would get a busy signal. And still, even with pared-down services, keeping the landline was costing us nearly $700 a year. 

Only a few people we knew ever called us on our landline, but it was very popular with politicians, telemarketers, and scammers. A couple of years ago, I bought a new AT&T cordless phone/answering machine that could filter out many of those calls, but it would still ring once, which would entice us look to see who it was on the other end. 

When I called Verizon to discontinue service, the friendly rep asked if I’d like to retain basic service, in case I needed to call 911. I thought about it for a second, but it would still cost $350 a year, so I declined. 

After our dial tone was dead, I offered the nearly new cordless phones to my Facebook friends, and I was surprised by the range of responses I received. One friend welcomed me to the new world, but another called me “bold” for making the move to cell only. One person mentioned keeping the landline so the kids could call 911, and another mentioned their landline through the cable company (not the same). 

Phone service through the cable company is not a true landline unless you take a couple of steps. If the power goes out, your cable phone service is worthless unless you have a battery backup for your modem AND you have a corded phone plugged into the modem. 

This brings us back to the 911 comment. Back in the day, kids could be taught to call for help on the phone, even before 911. And back in the day, all phones were corded, so you could simply pick up the handset and dial a number. A two-year-old could be taught to dial 0 to get help. 

I started to wonder how children are taught to call 911 these days. When my kids were young, they knew their phone number and address. They could press the right button on the cordless phone to turn it on and then press 911. What do kids do when there’s no landline anymore? I decided to write another post on that for parents: Teaching Young Kids to Call 911.

Well, it’s been about a month since we got rid of our landline. Do I miss it? 

I don’t miss the various handsets taking up room around the house. Less to dust. I do miss coming home and looking to see if the red light of the answering machine was blinking (most often it was not). I also miss having a backup means of calling (although I haven’t needed to). And we can’t fax anymore. We have a fancy printer/scanner/faxer and realized we can’t use the fax feature anymore. How often do we use the fax machine? Rarely.

All in all, I’m okay that we discontinued the landline, but I still have this tiny worry in the back of my mind about what will happen during the “next” nine-eleven when all the cell phone circuits are jammed, and I can’t call out on a landline. Or when there’s another widespread power-grid failure (like 20 years ago) and I can’t call the fire department. 

Realistically, if the cellphone circuits were jammed, I wouldn’t be able to call someone else’s cellphone with my landline. And as far as calling the fire department on my landline, if things were that bad, they probably wouldn’t be able to get to me because they’d be overwhelmed dealing with apocalypse emergency matters. 

Yes, these are the workings of an anxious mind, but I guess I’ll be okay.