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Outages are possible with landlines and cell phones. It would probably be easier to tap a landline, since the listening to cell phone conversations requires expensive equipment and significant expertise (you can easily tap a land line with a quick trip to Radio Shack.) It's also easy for a saboteur to disable a landline in a home with a pair of scissors. Jamming a cell phone is possible, but requires expensive equipment that cannot be legally obtained in the United States.
My wife and I ditched our land line about 5 years ago. Out alarm system uses a cellular modem to communicate with the call center. I sometimes wish I could use the fax that is built into my printer, but it's hard to justify the cost of phone service for that reason alone. I have never experienced a cell phone outage since we ditched our landline.
Of course, the need for a landline is a no-brainer if you live in an area with no cell phone reception, or very poor reception.
When you consider the increasing use of cell phones and VoIP services, you have to wonder how much longer traditional phone service will survive.
You can send faxes over the internet. Serveral services offer limited faxing for free. If I need to fax a document that I don't have an electronic file for I'll scan it into a PDF format and then fax it via the internet.
If you do a search for "internet faxing" or "internet fax" I'm sure you'll come up with a list of available faxing services.
I got rid of the POTS. Switched to OOMA, which is a VOIP service with a 1-time fee ($200) and no monthly fee. Been using it for almost two years. No issues. I've already gotten my money's worth.
absolutely not. ATT is a hot. a basic landline here costs $30. If you add caller ID, its $40. A VOIP provider (magicjack) charges $20 for an entire year.
I guess that depends on the technology and area. My landline sucked, poor sound quality, especially on long-distance calls. When I first called my mother (several thousand km away) on the cell phone we were both surprised, it was as if she had been standing right next to me, way better quality.
I haven't had a conventional land-line in over a decade. VoIP absolutely slaughters POTS in cost and features. Some features I find particularly useful:
Unlimited calls to anywhere in the U.S. and Canada for a flat rate;
"Simultaneous ring" where an incoming call can ring not only your own phone but whatever phone numbers you designate -- that way I never have to give out my cell phone number because an inbound call will ring both my home phone and my cell phone;
Selective call rejection where you can block specific numbers -- particularly useful for persistent telemarketers or anyone else you don't want to hear from (which is another reason I don't give out my cell phone number, so I can use blocking to block people I don't want to hear from);
Selective call-forwarding so that when people from work try to call my wife at home on her day off, it redirects their call right back to her work phone where they can leave a message and she can deal with work issues on work time rather than on her own time;
The ability to place and receive calls on my computer anywhere I have a broadband connection so I don't have to use cell minutes;
The ability to automatically block all calls between certain hours so we can get peace and quiet at night;
The ability to manage all these features and retrieve voice mail through a web interface;
Calls to most western European countries for about 2 cents a minute (useful for talking to one of my old acquantances in England);
"Virtual" phone numbers with any U.S. area code I want; that way when I want to send out a resume to a prospective employer in the Twin Cities area, I can get a phone number with a 612 area code so they don't know I'm not a local;
Plus all the standard features like call-waiting, call-forwarding, 3-way calling, caller ID, et cetera.
All this for 20 bucks a month plus an extra $5 for each virtual number. Ain't never going back to POTS.
"Virtual" phone numbers with any U.S. area code I want; that way when I want to send out a resume to a prospective employer in the Twin Cities area, I can get a phone number with a 612 area code so they don't know I'm not a local;
They might find out when they invite you to drop by for an interview within an hour or two
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