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A blogger talked to the VP of Time Warner and asked why they sometimes discount the bill so that it is cheaper with phone service than without it. The blogger had actually given his phone away, so he never ever used the phone line. The VP told him that it increases loyalty in most customers. So TWC finds that it is cheaper to give away phone service to keep their "churn rate" low.
Of course it does. I can't believe this nimrod had to ask. The cheapest landline you are going to find around me is probably $25 for unlimited everything.
So cable charges you $140 for Cable + Internet, but add your phone and we'll charge you $130.
Then, of course, they raise your price every year.
Now you want to drop cable... now it will cost you another $25.month? Heck with that!
Of course it does. I can't believe this nimrod had to ask.
Well, he is a blogger. That's their job, to get to the truth behind the obvious.
My cable company gave us free Showtime, and a deep discount on a TiVo (the older model than the Roamio introduced in August of 2013). Now if I ask them about anything they keep throwing it back in my face.
I asked them if I drop the telephone, will they just drop the taxes and fees associated with the phone . This request was partly in response to their repeated assertions that all the taxes and fees were out of corporate control. They told me that they would have to re-evaluate the entire package and charge me for TiVo equipment and my bill would actually go up.
$0.26 Federal Excise Tax
$2.07 State Gross Receipts Tax
$8.50 Federal Subscriber Line Charge
$0.08 State Telecom Relay Surcharge
$1.45 Federal Universal Service Fund
$1.25 City 911 Fee
Part of the issue is anything that is labelled "tax" is actually a tax. Line items labelled "charge, surcharge, fund and fee" are really revenue streams that the government allows the company to add above the advertised rate. If they discontinued phone service the corporation would not have to pay the taxes, but they would just lose the revenue from the other line items and their costs would not go down.
Power outage and battery? They sell those portable charger things for 15 bucks at Target, they stayed charged until you need it, then act as a portable charger. if that fails, then there is the car. But at that, I do not even remember I have had the power go out.
Cell tower outage? sure, wait a while, or just commute a short distance away. Someone above mentioned super storm Sandy, I know someone who was in it, they just road their bicycles a couple of miles away to make phone calls as the cell service worked just fine. They would have drove, but the car worked fine, but could not drive it out. At that, the entire cell outage was like three days. They only rode out to make a cell call to let their relatives know they were fine. Anyway, how often does something like that happen?
We no longer have a landline. However, it was useful when Hurricane Wilma hit my area because it was still working. My cell phone did not have service and I suspect many others did not have service.
The massive cell phone and VOIP outage in the Southeast a few days ago will convince more people to hold on to their landlines.
The preliminary diagnostic was that a single cable was cut, despite the belief of many engineers that cutting any single cable should not cause a widespread loss of service.
1. The audio quality on a wired landline is superior to cell phone audio. This is due to the fact that cell phones have less bandwidth allocated to the audio spectrum. They also produce more audio distortion. They also frequently drop calls.
2. I have a huge house. It has 2 wired phones that will continue to work in case of a power outage, and 5 portable wireless phones that are conveniently located throughout the house.
3. A wired telephone includes a touch pad that is separate from the audio receiver. That makes it convenient to input numbers while listening to the response for a particular application.
4. My wife spends hours on the phone gabbing to her female friends and relatives. The wireless handsets used in the home operate at a much lower frequency and power than cell phones. As such, they are less likely to induce brain cancer due to electromagnetic emissions.
No cons for me. I last had a landline in 2004. Used to gets lots of random weirdos calling at sometimes very late hours. That was my biggest pet peeve. One person would call and just mumble nonsense. I was rarely home anyway so the cell was the main point of contact as it was.
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