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Technology

Could Cell Phones Replace Regular Phones? 81

Posted by Cliff from the it-could-happen! dept.
JoseMonkey asks: "The reliability and quality of wireless telephones continues to improve, and the total cost of ownership and cost of use is steadily decreasing.In light of that, I'm starting to wonder if I could forget about conventional phones altogether and simply use my cell phone. Calling plans like AT&T Wireless Services' "OneRate" program make roaming charges a non-issue, and the cost of service is fairly reasonable. In fact, I'm having trouble thinking of reasons to keep my home phone. Can anyone think of a reason not to tell my local phone company to take a hike?" (Read on...)

Although something like this could happen, I think there are several reasons why we aren't-quite-ready-for-it-yet. Cellular coverage is spotty at best across the U.S. and I'm not quite sure how widespread coverage is in Europe (but the information would be appreciated). I mean, I have a new cell phone (a Nokia 6185) and there were times I couldn't make a call from the center of downtown Manhattan which mystified the hell out of me at the time (turns out my phone was somehow kicked out of the system).

Of course, when it comes to signal quality, I think that there are some cellular phones that sound better than your average land-line, but the place where your land-line will win hands down over any of the new wireless upstarts is reliability. On a landline phone, you pick the receiver up off the cradle and you get a dialtone (assuming you've paid the bill, of course). I'm sure many of you will agree that cellular isn't quite at that level yet, although it's getting there. I figure everything will change within a year or two that will make even today's best predictions meaningless.

So how long do you think it will take (if ever) before everyone has a cell phone and land lines become a thing of the past?
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Could Cell Phones Replace Regular Phones? More

Could Cell Phones Replace Regular Phones?

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  • The Jury is still out with that brain cancer stuff. We'll all know in about 10-15 years exactly whats going on. Either its no big deal or a super-duper tragedy just incubating.

  • Elswhere on the globe... (Score:4)

    by ruppel ( 82583 ) on Monday May 15, 2000 @11:05PM (#1070421)
    This is something that is already happening a lot and not so much in the western industrialized countries but more so in the third world countries where there is no telephone network to begin with. Governments in Asia and Africa find it cheaper to build a mobile network instead of upgrading, or in some cases actually starting from scratch, a conventional cable based network. Although the cost of an individual cell phone is astronomical in relative economic terms it is cheaper for an village in Africa to buy one cell phone than to to get a puplic phone booth for example.

    On the other hand in industrialized countries the reasons for switching entirely to mobile phones are different but mostly also cost related. Countries where the mobile coverage reaches an acceptable range, and I personally can only talk about Finland where ist is darn close to 100%, there is really no drawback to having a cell phone regardless of where you live (plus the obvious advantages of the cell phones mobility).

    Here in Finland the amount of housholds with only a cell phone and no hard line is rising steadily as well as in other European countries. The main reason being cheap phone calls. Whith the infrastructure of the mobile network in place, operators can start lowering the call prices as the investments that were needed to build the network are being paid back and the interest on them get less and less. The price difference in the monthly fee of a hard line and a mobile is enough to let you talk for about one hour on your mobile, admittedly not much, but with additional plans for eg. interoperator calls that can go up to three hours and then your only at the amount you'd have to pay for having the hard line to your home. I reacon the States still have some way to go before a significant price drop in the call charges happens since your operators are still building the network and that takes a lot of money.

    One other big question which comes up in deciding whether to get rid of the hard line is the computer. Connecting to the net over a cell phone is... well it sucks. Here again students have the advantage since universities offer unlimited net access in some cases even in the campus living quarters. Other non-phoneline related solutions like cable modems are slowly making progress and in turn accelerate the rate at which people give up their hard lines (with a cable modem and a mobile phone you really don't need a hard line anymore).

  • I moved to the Netherlands from the US 6 months ago and the amount of people with mobile phones just amazed me.

    The prices are alright ( go here for details Dutch GSM pricing summary [bellen.com]. It's a summary of all mobile plans offered in the Netherlands. It's in Dutch but you'll figure it out. 1f is about $.40 )

    I think the reason is HOW they price. With all phones, land and cell, owners only pay for out-going calls. So, if you have a cell phone you can leave it on all the time and not worry about someone calling you and talking your ear off.

    Mobiles here have their own area codes that way people calling you know that it's going to be more expensive

    Currently, the only minus I see with only having a cell phone is that calling international is pretty expensive where-as it's pretty cheap with land-phones. Oh, and cell modem speeds are pretty slow.

    As far as coverage, it's great and it doesn't seem to be affected going into Germany and Belgium.

    (On a side note, I have yet to see ONE pager here.)

  • i stay in south africa and altough costly i only as do most pepole i know use a cell this makes it cheaper for me as cell-cell calls are cheaper than terestrial-cell calls the comedy is cell phones are more reliable than land lines.

    for internet i have a leased analougue line that works out cheaper than dialup.

    its a win win situation.

    bandwidth is hellish expensive 15000R per 64kb/s
    so high speed lines are out the question.

  • Lets start a price comparison thread. I for one would be interested in how expensive mobile calls are elswhere. I'll start be entering the prices for Finland:

    Monthly: $2.92 - $4.62 (no data conection) $4.62 - $18 (data connection) Calls: $0.09 - $0.15 (to same operator) $0.09 - $0.37 (to hard line) $0.15 - $0.37 (to other operator)

    These are the prices for the oprator that I use, Radiolinja, the prices of other operators are pretty much the same since there is fierce competition over customers here in Finland where the law prohibits long term binding contracts to operators and thus switching between them is easy.

    The price ranges indicated give the prices depending on time of day and type of contract. not listed are special contracts like "family line" where the call costs between three individual phones and a hard line can be as low as $0.04 per minute.

    For reference, a hard line costs about $10 a month with calls at $0.07 per ten minutes. So lets hear what ather countries have to offer.

  • I noticed last summer, that with a GSM to handle my calls and a cable modem for network access, my regular phone was mostly unused. Come to think of it, most of my friends don't have regular telephones anymore.

    Atleast over here in Finland, the mobile markets are very competitive which brings down the prices. Regular telephone calls are cheaper, but the fixed monthly fee is considerably higher.
  • Note that you can be charged for incoming calls when "roaming" (using your cellphone in another country). What happens then is that you are charged for the international leg of the call while the person calling you pays the same rate as if you were still in the country of origin. Your service provider may provide special tariffs to reduce this cost so do check!

    Europe does have the advantage over the US with the widespread adoption of GSM (currently limited to major cities in the US) - even in Eastern Europe coverage is impressive (check out this [sksl.com] for details).

    For real Internet access we will have to wait for 3G and given the astronomical licence fees paid [theregister.co.uk] so far, pricing is likely to be more of an issue.

  • I was at a conference recently where a rep from one to the Telcos said that increasingly people are using moobile phones for all voice calls and the land line is used for Internet/data access. This is most true in younger and more tech savvy phone users.

    With the growth of high speed access they expected the trend to grow even faster.

    -----------------------------

  • The only down side I can see is perhaps is data communications. I'm not sure about most places but all the cable companies that I know ask that you pay for cable TV for cablemodem services.

    If you use DSL or some other Telco inet access, they might toss in the same idea that you need some basic phone service.
  • I'm currently contracting in the mobile (cellular) billing section of an Australian Telco. Later this year an office move is planned, and as part of the new office fit out they are looking at going totally wireless - no fixed line phones for people, just mobiles, and wireless LAN connections.

    I'm curious how this will work given the lack of consistency with in building coverage and other interference that mobiles can suffer.

    In some areas when installing a 'fixed phone' we actually install a phone that uses the mobile network. IIRC there is at least one island whose entire phone network is provided using mobile technology.

  • I'm curious how this will work given the lack of consistency with in building coverage and other interference that mobiles can suffer.

    With GSM systems (and probably others too), your cells can tailored to fit your needs. For example, you can have cells serving each floor and a vertical cell serving the elevator shaft. These kind of systems are typical in large shopping centers and offices. In addition to given good coverage, they also cut down on network signalling traffic due to less cell changes (the elevator, subway or a highway are good examples of tailored cells).

    Disclaimer: I am not a mobile network professional. Be prepared to accept errors in what I say.

  • Is that in US$??? Seems incredibly cheap. I researched it, and the best rate plan was around $50 for 500 minutes. Past that, about $.15/min for non-roaming, and $.35 for roaming. Data costs you another $15 per month (I think).

    In the US, a home line runs about $18 per month. But then, you don't have to pay for any local calls whatsoever.
  • With Short Messaging Service (SMS) standard in GSM phones, you can send up to about 180 characters to a mobile phone.

    The practical upshot is that nobody cares about pages anymore.

    -John
  • But if someone has your cell phone number to send you SMS, they can also call you. The pager is a good filter. Since they are unreliable at times, you can "not get" messages. :-)
  • Sorry, I forgot the source where I read it, but there are five countries currently having more mobile phones than landlines: Italy and Finland, and Cambodia, Rwanda and [another country I cannot remember, but belongs to the same category].

    A sidenote: getting a landline in Denmark costs significant amount of money, and it is connected to your appartment. So people shifting appartments every now and then (students and similar) are often not having a land-line connected at all (eg me).

  • Less than a year ago I moved into a new apartment and realized hooking up phone service was pretty much ridiculous. With my cell service I get 600 minutes free a month, with free long distance and all for about the price of a conventional phone. I'm not much for chatting on the phone, so why bother? I have an answering service, a paging service and availability in a majority of the areas I "WANT" to be contacted in. In the end I finally got a phone line, but I went straight to ISDN, and its always dialed out for Internet. Thats the number I give to telemarketers...(Good luck getting me on that line...)
    I don't see how conventional phone companies are going to keep up unless they push DSL and such technologies a lot harder and a lot faster...
  • For cell phones to be accepted in the USA, the billing system will have to revamped much like it is in Finland and other countries.

    In underdeveloped countries, it may be much easier to run signal repeaters rather than traditional phone lines (probably easier maintenance, too).

    I once mentioned to my wife that we really don't need a phone anymore since our internet service is through a cable modem and we can use our cell phone just as easily (we have voicemail). She looked at me as if I had grown a third eye. Apparently, the idea was very unconventional to her, leading me to believe that social culture will have to get used to the idea that stationary phones will become dinosaurs.

    I can't count the number of times (lately) I've wanted someone to call me, but I've had to be home for the call.

    Most people (in the USA) have the idea that a cell phone is an infrequently used, emergency call device. It can be so much more.
  • It seems to me that the key for this to happen is how good service is at your house. You are only trying to replace one phone and so you only care about service at that location for comparison. Personally I have great service at my home (Sprint PCS) and have switched most people to use my cellular. I have a cable modem for Internet access. The only thing I use my regular phone for is telemarketers. I bought a phone with Caller ID in the handset and I just never, ever answer the darn thing unless I know who it is. I never give my cellular number to companies so it doesn't appear in those nasty phone spam databases. I guess you could call my old land line a phone spam trap :)
  • Speaking for the areas that I know best, Belgium, the Netherlands, France, England, Ireland and parts of eastern Europe, coverage is close to 100%. Other GSM areas cover all the major population centres and main roads, but with less coverage of rural areas. Many areas with no land line coverage often have a GSM signal, since a cell site will cover up to 5000 square Kms over a big flat rural area.

    The only parts of Belgium where coverage is spotty is the hilly south east corner, where the signals don't get down into the tiny valleys, and downtown Brusssels when the cell sites get overwhelmed by the huge number of users. France has close to 90% coverage, with only some mountainous regions missing. Even travelling around Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia and a few other former east bloc countries has an amazing level of coverage.

    I've got an american dual-band digital and analog phone for when I have to work in America. I'm constantly surprised how little coverage there is, especially when taking a road trip on the main highways. Even around DC, where I would expect a heavy investment by the local companies to provide 100% coverage, there was no signal in many places.

    But getting back on topic, YES, cell phones will eventually replace much of the land line installations, but not all. Businesses will never go wireless, it doesn't make sense except for maybe the sales force. Many citizens will stick to their landlines for now, they just don't lead the kind of lives where a portable makes sense. But younger people crave the independance of a cell phone, and if you read the euro-centric newsgroups you will find a lot of support for those who want to go completely wireless in their lives.

    I lived for years without a land line, but it was very tricky to get GSM service without a land line to tie it to. In France, it is close to impossible to get a cell phone without proving 'domicile fixe' with a current phone bill in your name. But friends have done it, first getting the cell phone, then cancelling their land line. Normally FT and Belgacom will not let you cancel your service until you provide them with a new address, so the best plan is to tell them you are moving to another country for a while for work or school. You might even get your deposit back :-)

    With any luck, when demand for hard lines starts to decrease, the phone companies will cut the prices way back, making POTS available for more poor people who can't afford it right now.

    the AC
  • Think about it - while roaming on your cellphone may be expensive, it's downright impossible on your landline. If you want to make the argument for "one phone," you need only consider what it costs you to make and recieve cellphone calls *at home*. I have had only a cell phone for about 5 years now. Initially it was because of the work I was doing, but now it's because I am rarely home, and when I am, I generally don't want to talk on the phone!

    No landline phone, PROS:

    You're not in the phone book. No telemarketers. This is a huge benefit.

    You have only one voicemail number to check.

    There are months when it's actually cheaper, depending on your lifestyle.

    No landline phone, CONS:

    Cellphones, quite honestly, suck. I often drop connections. This is improving fast, though, even in michigan.

    You're not in the phone book. No friends.

    You're gonna have to figure out another method for internet.

    Filling out forms for the doctor/employer/IRS is a little bit complicated when you only have one phone number.

    It freaks Grandma out.

    Guests have trouble figuring out how to make a call on your cellphone. (okay, that could be good)

  • One of my housemates uses her cell phone for all her calls (we're going to be using her landline for DSL), and my parents have disconnected long distance over the regular line because the cell phone is cheaper (mostly because 300 minutes/month free, anywhere in the US). Though amusingly, after my Dad cancelled long distance, we started getting $5/month charges for not having long distance. So he signed up for it again and then didn't pay the bill, at which point they cancelled our long distance service (without the monthly fee). Phone companies suck. :)

  • I don't have a land line. (Score:3)

    by bluGill ( 862 ) on Tuesday May 16, 2000 @05:29AM (#1070441)

    The person I rent a room from has a land line phone, but I don't use it. I don't know where I'll be living in two months. I see no reason to assume I'll live at the same address for 6 consecutive months again in my life. (Though odds are I will live in one place for a long time) My phone number hasn't changed in years, and I don't expect it to change often.

    Land lines are for data. If you want to contact me, I have one phone, and one number - my cell phone.

    I've only encountered two areas where I don't have service, and since I was on vacation both times I didn't feel bad. Besides it was just a matter of getting out of the tent and walking up the cliff (a couple hundred feet of steep hillside really) to get service. Not a big deal.

  • Cellphone, PROS:
    When I'm on my American phone, I get telemarketer calls all the time, since the area code is the same as my home region, and the prefix has a mix of cell and land lines. Most of the people I know over there get them as well, and just hang up as soon as its obvious the call is not one they want. The telemarketers change their script to try to keep you on the line longer without you abrubtly hanging up. I talked to one last month, and she was perfectly aware she was calling a cell phone number and costing me money. She wanted me to buy cell phone accessories and insurance.

    no landline, CONS:
    Internet access? You still use a POTS modem? xDSL, Cable, Wireless, ISDN and other new technologies should make the analog modem seem archaic. I use my land line for SDSL only, it doesn't have a phone number associated with it. Freaks out the installation technician, even though he knows me through work.

    Your friends require you to be in the phone book? I hand my cell number out like candy to anyone who wants it. Phone books over here only have 50% of land lines listed, so most people just shrug if they don't find you in the book.

    the AC

  • Already happening (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Mobile 'phones have already entirely replaced land lines for a few people I know, and have become the primary contact for many others. Around 40% of the UK population own a mobile phone, I believe Finland leads the world with over 70% usage. Extremely competative markets have put pricing within reasonable reach for many unemployed and students, even school kids. Mobile 'phones are sold in pre-packaged boxes in supermarkets.
    Part of this is because most European telcos stopped charging the mobile 'phone owners for receiving calls quite some time ago. I understand that this still isn't always the case in the US?
    In the UK, the coverage is very good in reasonably densely populated areas, and weak only in the very least densly populated areas of the country.
    With upcoming technologies like GPRS [mobilegprs.com] and UMTS [umts-forum.org], mobile data will become a sensible proposition. Given that the mobile phone operators need to make 370UKP (about $590) profit from every man, woman, and child in the UK to just cover the costs of the recent radio-spectrum auction [spectrumauctions.gov.uk], you can bet that the companies will be heavily pushing products suitable for everyone, from accessing AOL and shopping channels to real-time video conferencing. You can also bet that the 'web pads' and the like, will be using CPUs from Transmeta [transmeta.com] and ARM [arm.com], and hopefully those that aren't running EPOC [symbian.com] will be running a free [fsf.org] O [debian.org]/S [freebsd.org].
  • So how did you get it fixed up that you don't have a phone number for your DSL line? That *is* freaky. DSL is one of the reasons I keep my landline. The other being that I call internationally sometimes, which horrendously expensive on a mobile phone - a call to anywhere in North America (from the Netherlands, Europe) will cost me about 5 US Cents a minute. Most of Europe the same. On a mobile phone calling there will cost me around 75 US Cents a minute. But it'd still be pretty cool to just have DSL and no phone number... hehe.

    Cheers!

    Costyn.
  • Telemarketers:
    I have *never* had a telemarketer call any of the three cellphone numbers I've had. Hmmmm.

    Internet Access:
    I live somewhere where DSL, Cable, and ISDN are not available yet for the home. Really.

  • I'm sticking to my stationary phone, I hate mobiles. I don't want to be reachable everywhere, and when people visit me, the mobile phone should be turned off. I already have a phone, and 2 phones in the house is overdoing it. But, here in the netherlands, with coverage of about 95% (give or take 5%) mobile phones are a reasonable alternative to stationary ones. if you don't mind the terrible soundquality of most phones. Now if only people would turn off their phones.. I really hate people (who always start talking VERY VERY LOUDLY) getting phonecalls in cinemas, bars, coffee-shops etc.

    //rdj
  • Pager coverage is sporadic, and it's difficult to find carriers with multi-national networks. With the high cellular adoption rates in Europe, pagers for the most part simply are not necessary.

    Giving up my pager was the best part of moving to Germany :-)

    -Bryce

  • When I moved last October. I needed a phone. I looked at the cost of installing a hard line where I was staying and the cost of a cell phone. I compared what I needed in a phone and how I used it. Installing a hard line would have been $129 and getting a cell phone was only $119. After I added all the features that I would need to the hard line my bill would have been $65 a month. With my cell phone I got all the features I wanted plus the flexablity of a cell phone for $67 a month.

    For that 67 clams I got Caller ID, Voice Mail, Call Forwarding, Detailed Billing, and Call Waiting. I have 450 minutes of "primetime" use and unlimited nights and weekend use. During the day it is a business phone and at night is a personal phone. Thank you BellSouth!

    As for coverage. I'm covered 99% of the places that I go and I live in Alabama to boot.

    I moved out a few months latter and I still don't have a hard line. As far as I'm concerned I never will.

  • One of the biggest problems with current cellular technology is that the phones cannot be localized. If you call 911 from a land-based line, the operator knows immediately where you are calling from. There are a few solutions to this problem by using GPS receivers on the phones. However, I don't think any cellular network has implemented this technology yet.
  • When I moved into this house, it had two phone lines already installed. But since we live entirely on our GSM phones, we didn't get analog access turned on. Tried to get ISDN access, but at the time it wasn't available. Now, thanks to a DSLAM I helped install in the local CO, I've got SDSL and a range of static IP addresses. We've also got cable access, but it doesn't get used as much. Sometime I have access to a major POP with a wireless connection.

    The whole order entry process was very wierd, they have ruled it impossible to have a phone line without service. And I was standing in the room with the senior project managers, not trying to do this to an anonymous entry clerk on the end of a phone call. But they couldn't understand how I could live without an analog phone line. Its a very strange world, the old telco mindset.

    The lines had battery but no dial tone, so the technician removed them physically from the plant MDF, and wired them straight to the DSLAM. That gave me 1 Mbps in each direction since I didn't need filters at either end. I have one machine powered up all the time in my place dedicated to doing quality checks for the DSL provider. We're on good terms, so I get to do what I want, and in return I help them out with some of the strange technical problems they run into. Of course, if I were to charge them for all that work, they would owe me lots of money, but its a great learning experience for me as well.

    My current project for selfish reasons is to get the cable operator and the phone company to talk IP/BGP4 to each other. Traceroute from cable to DSL goes through 14 hops and the UK, even though the routers are only a few meters apart. I've even told them I would help out with the BGP4 routing so only traffic between the 2 systems would pass, and not be a major conduit. But they are both convinced that Belgian law forbids them from talking or connecting to each other. Given the lack of any enforcement of any laws in this country, I doubt it would ever be noticed.

    the AC
  • Some people consider that good. I think that they should at least make it so the locator feature can be disabled by the user.
  • I would like to be able to walk in a store and pay cash for a phone, and pre-pay for a certain number of minutes in cash, and then walk out having never revealed my name or other personal information. Of course, I should also be able to return with the phone and more cash and add more minutes.

    Does anyone know of where I can get such a deal ?

    In what countries is this common ?
  • I spent a week in the UK recently, most of the time in northern Scotland, and I was amazed at how much better their system was than what we have in the States. All of the phones have really cool musical rings, Just about EVERYONE has one, and the coverage was amazing, even out in the middle of Nowhere in the Highlands of Scotland. I asked our bus driver about it, and he was surprised our coverage was so much worse!
  • The one thing that will keep me a landline customer for a long time to come is the fact that a simple conventional telephone is powered by the telco, not the electric company. For all we hate about The Phone Company, they're *extremely* reliable. They've done high availability longer than anyone.

    We generally get at least one >24-hour power outage a year, but the phones never go down. After the batteries run out, if I can't power my cellphone some other way, it's useless.

    [Still looking forward to the next huge advance in battery technology, and the day we kiss the power grid goodbye!]
  • A few years ago AT&T started a program called "project angel" which was intended to replace POTS lines with a cellular system in the home. Check out this [cnet.com] story at Cnet.com.
  • Near me (I live on Long Island, New York), you
    can walk into a 7-11 (24 convienence store) and
    pick up a disposable sprint pcs phone whenever
    you want. Then, just keep on buying the pre-paid
    phone cards, and plugging thier number into the
    phone.

    It's kind of expensive though, prepaid minutes aren't cheap. The phone itself is about $100.

    - Aakin

  • I don't find that to be a problem at all. One battery on my Nokia lasts about 2 hours of talk time and I've had it on standby for a week with out recharging it. And that is with the standard NiMH battery. I've got two of those, when one runs down I just pop another in if I need it. You can get spare batterys from ebay for $19 bucks and that is the LiON ones. You can even get a battery with 14 hours of talk time and a 40 hours of stand by. Don't have one of those and don't think I will.

  • Many people on this thread have noted how much better coverage is in Europe than in the US, though not much is said of why this might be. It's certainly partly a result of different goals and cost systems, but I think the biggest difference is one of population density. I am an American, though I'ved lived in Germany for about 7 years. When I first came to Europe I looked up the statistics for several different European countries. If memory serves, Belgium, Britain, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands each have population densities about 10 TIMES that of the US. This means for every square mile (or square kilometer), there are 10 times as many Europeans in those countries than in the US. For instance, Germany is only a little bigger than North and South Carolina put together in the US, but has some 90 million people. All of the US put together has about 270 million (if memory serves). France and Spain have somewhat lower densities but I believe they are still higher than the US. Probably most of Scandinavia is lower. What does this mean? It means it is relatively cheaper per-person (by as much as 10:1) to string up a cellular network with 100% coverage in Europe. It will take much longer and probably cost a lot more to do so in the US and the rest of North America. It would be interesting to correlate population density with cellular coverage.
  • I dropped my landline in '98, and have been straight PCS ever since. The biggest problems:

    * Not dependable. Mobile phone companies believe it far more acceptable to have a tower down than landline companies do to have your line dead. Neither really give a shit, but my company [intelos.com] cares a bit less.

    * No phone book listing. I'd like to be in the phone book, but it just won't happen. I tried to pay them, but they still wouldn't do it. Small problem, but it does suck.

    * Extensions. I'd like to have multiple phones on the same line. One in the kitchen, one in my bedroom. When the phone rings, then I wouldn't have to race across the apartment to wherever I left my phone.

    * Modem. I've got a DSL, so I don't really care, but it would be nice to have the option of having a modem when my DSL dies. (Again, courtesy of Intelos [intelos.net].)

    * Long distance. I pay $0.15 / minute, and I can't switch. I've never heard of a mobile phone provider that would let people switch their long distance. I can't call overseas. Intelos tries to tell me that it's technically impossible, which is a load, clearly. Once that line hits the CO, it doesn't matter what kind of a phone that I'm on. Again, I'm yet to find a mobile phone provider that would let me make overseas calls.

    I won't go back to a landline. But I've been tempted, a few times, to suppliment my mobile with a landline.

    -Waldo

  • Agreed. Remember too that parts of the country are much lower yet. There are places in the US where if there was a tower, less then 100 people in a day would have the potential to use it!

    Add in valleys (Which are hard to cover) and you can expect poor coverage. In any metropolition area or anyplace with big roads (The US has a great road system) the coverage is great.

  • I belive it is illegal to make unsolisited calls to a cell phone. (In the Us, I don't know about the rest of the world) That is you cannot call me up trying to sell me something. You can make an unsolisited call for something that I would reasonabbly want to know.

    I wish xDSL, or cable modem or similear was avaiable in my area. I'm not far from the central office of either, but they won't do it. Best bet currently seems to be a uncurrent in the city to open up the fiber link they ahve around town for goverment use to everyone. (This is mostly court house to fire department and schools. I don't expect to ever see it though as security must be a concern)

  • I have a car charger for my phone. I find it highly unlikely that any power outage would affect both my ability to find some car (any car, the neighbor's would do) that works and my local power service.

    I can imangine something taking out the tower and all the power lines, but that is a slightly different problems.

  • When Sprint PCS service became available, I bought a phone fro my wife and myself, and dropped Ameritech (hopefully never to return).

    I am figuring a $25-40 savings per month over traditional land-line phones. Before I used an ISDN line so we each had a number, but now we each have a phone, voicemail, callerID, etc. Long Distance is included and we have 1000 minutes to blow this month.

    I know of a ouple otherr people who ditched their land line phones, I believe it will become increasingly popular, as high-speed internet access (cable, and DSL) become more popular.

    What would be really cool is a cradle for the cell phone, that plugs into your homesexisting wiring, and when the phone is "docked" allows you to place and recive calls like a regular land-line. I imagine some kind of mini-pbx would actually provide the dial tone, and the interface between cell-phone and teh handsets in your house. That would be quite cool, has anyone heard of anything like that?

    -MS2k
  • Actually, I guess I should have mentioned it in my submission -- I have a cable modem. So, the hard lines to my apartment aren't really all that useful anymore . . .
  • I've heard the term "leap-frogging" used to describe poorer nations that are using advanced technologies like cell-phones so as not to have to create physical infrastructure like land-line based phones.

    This is the same process for many other technologies including computers and wireless networks -- in a way these countries have western nations beat because they don't have legacy systems (and whole economies like telco's and cable companies) built on 'land-based' technologies.

    Sometimes we make such poor choices in the name of supporting existing infrastructure (don't get me going about gas-guzzling cars)...
  • I'd love to drop my land line and get a cell phone but I'd have to get two, one for me and one for my wife. Is anyone in this same situation? Do you have two cell phones and no landline? Is it financially viable?

  • Get earphones (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    There are earphones that plug into the cell phone and come with a microphone that clips onto the lapel. This way you're far enough from the cell phone to avoid the brain cancer risk.
  • One thing that might make mobiles more widespread would be WLL, or a releated technolgy. Basically the idea is that you have mini-repeater in your home, that treats calls made through it as a local call. In terms of setting up mobile in a wired region, this makes a whole lot of sense, and in the US where local calls are billed at a flat rate it might make the transition happen a whole lot faster.

    I personally believe that wireless is not only feasible, it's being delayed. I'm not sure why, or by whom, but the technology is there. Financially, everyone with the capitol is doing too well to be really pressured to alter things, but it seems to me that wires should be for power, period.

    As far as cell modems being slow, there is a truth to that, but wireless ethernet isn't, and I don't really see any reason why it should be building by building; Lucent manufactures mile radius plus antennae for the stuff; I think there's a market for an ISP that sets up wireless ether and rents/sells WiFi cards to those without. I think there's a market for a WLL base that could be a one time purchase and would talk to your cell phone and put it on your local line. Combine that with a single-number service and you're in business.

    I really do think that there's a whole realm of possibilities that a little real innovation and invention in the wireless device field might open up.

    For instance, what about a device that set cell phones within it's range to vibrate or 'take a message' mode if available. Great for meeting rooms, and better for movie theatres. Granted, we aren't there yet, and the current billing schemes are insane (for instance, at the moment, I'll bet the service providers would charge you to have your phone silenced in the movies as well as charging the theatre), and there's room for abuse (some sort of authorization or some such to prevent people from buying a kill-box and shutting peoples phones down.) but consider the benifits of a technical society freed of wires and matured beyond the expectation that that means instant access to everyone.

    Rambling summary: I certainly hope wireless can beat out wired. And I think it can.

    Ushers will eat latecomers.

  • You get yelled at, or questioned, as to why you didn't answer your mobile phone. At least if you don't have one, you don't have to explain.

    Personally, I think of cell phones and beepers as leashes - plain and simple. However, I don't think of myself as a slave...
  • I have recently been faced with this problem too. I am moving out into an apartment with a high speed data connection. The phone company requires a standard phone line for DSL service. So I said certainly, I will take a regular phone line so I may have some high speed access. I also have one of the SPRINT PCS phones, with no roaming, and no long distance. So pretty much the home phone is the telemarketers phone line.

    -Tim
  • Most european countries have that, nowadays. However, remember that's its probably possible to find out who you are by your call patterns, should anybody really want to.

    -John
  • I figured it would be something like that.

    The only downside I can see is availability. Sometimes my cell service goes down (well back in the day more often than now) and my traditional phone service almost never does. But I think your on the right track, Cell only will one day be a great way to go.
  • On a landline phone, you pick the receiver up off the cradle and you get a dialtone (assuming you've paid the bill, of course).

    We live at the northern tip of Bell Atlantic's NJ local landline service area. According to Bell Atlantic we live in a completely different county to the people on the other side of town - calling my stepdaughter's grandmother, who lives 5 minutes walk away but who has Sprint as the local carrier, is a local-toll call.

    Because we're so remote from the rest of Bell Atlantic's operations (38000 feet from the switch according to dslreports.com [dslreports.com]) our quality of service sucks. It took three months to get both of our lines working successfully - they eventually fixed it when I started talking to their repair people about getting a third line installed (which would have had to have been new copper) and cancelling one of the other two. Calls to their service department were a joke, as I started treating their estimated date for someone to come out as an opening gambit in a negotiating session, rather than a hard position ("Someone will be out on Friday morning", "Come on, that's 3 days away - I know you can do better than that. How about late afternoon tomorrow instead", "I'll take a look and see if there'll be anyone nearby then").

    After all this, we can't get more than a 26Kbps connection to the web, and our voice line is useless in a rainstorm. We can't get DSL (too far away from the switch), towns 10 miles away from us don't even have cable TV service, so we've little hope of cable modems, and we live in NJ's Ski area (I bet lots of you didn't know NJ even had skiing!) so wireless reception is spotty to say the least.

    Considering I'm still hoping to get one form of phone service that works consistently, and I live less than 50 miles from the biggest city in the US, I think that it's still a bit of a stretch to imagine a near-term situation where lots of people in the US are completely wireless.

  • I'm using my cell phone as my only phone right now. But it's pretty darn expensive. In my area (Cleveland), both SprintPCS and AT&T signals are just too weak for some of the buildings I'm in alot (including my brick apartment building). I'm well within the digital service area of both companies, but it's just too weak. I personally don't think SprintPCS and AT&T have been keeping up with the demand, and have seen many of my friends switch to more expensive servive from other companies after they grew tried of hearing the phone beep everytime they went into a little hole in the coverage. While $59.99 for 500 min (or whatever it is these days) with no long distance sounds great, one has to consider the level of service you'll get. I eventually went with Airtouch(now Verizon, used to be CellularOne) because no matter where I went, i always had a good signal.
  • That cell phone converage is spotty in the US really dose suprise me. Here in the UK, on the Orange network (99% coverage). When outdoors i have only ever lost two calls. Both times in a very low area (altitudem, that is) (Orange have a very high frequency slot, well above that of the other mobile people: vodafone, one2one, bt cellnet). Unless it a thick walled building, or im at the center of it, I also find similar excelent coverage indoors as well.
    --
  • I dont know if you are in the UK or elsewhere, but here in england most mobile companies allow for you to have two phones on the same account/bill. So.. if you are planning to have a contract phone with a monthly change you dont pay much more, and you can get discounts etc...
    --
  • cr0sh: You get yelled at, or questioned, as to why you didn't answer your mobile phone. At least if you don't have one, you don't have to explain.

    You don't have to be a slave to your phone; and it's nobody's business whether you answer your mobile phone or not.

    My phone -- any phone, land or mobile -- is there for my convenience, not the caller's. If I feel like answering the phone, I will. If not, that's what voice mail is for. But I do not and will not drop everything simply because the phone demands it.
  • > All of the phones have really cool musical rings

    To you, maybe. To us poor suckers who have to put up with the things day-in, day-out 365 days a year they get very old very quickly.

    And before you ask, I know when my cellphone is ringing because it has a 'brrr- brrr' noise, unlike 99% of the other phones out there.
  • Also, look into how much you would save since calls between you and your partner would remain in the same network or operator. Some operaters also offer friends and family type discounts.

    I fall into the catagory of a GSM user with a fixed line at home. The fixed line is mainly used for Data and for longer calls. Nothing beats a mobile in terms of reachability (assuming you have good coverage, a charged battery, etc.)
  • I haven't hung up my internet connection in over 3 weeks, and that was only because of a storm that took out the landline. Neither dsl or cablemodem has reached my area yet, and the line quality is so bad I'm pretty much locked at 2.8k a sec. I use my cellphone for everything voice. My nextel plan is wildly expensive(~100US a month), but I don't pay extra for incoming calls, long distance calls, roaming. I have voicemail, caller id, call forwarding, 3 way call, etc all included. Plus Direct Connect(a 2 way radio feature between me and other users. It bounces off the cell towers, so the range is . I actually use that more than I use the actual phone part, as its not included in my monthly 600 minutes, and it tends to circumvent the "hi, how ya doin. blah blah blah." effect when all I want to do is ask a quick question.
    To the people who are saying "cellphone network coverage has to be near 100% before..." or something like that, does your landline cover the whole US? If the cellphone covers your house and the surrounding area greater than the radius of a 2.4 ghz cordless, it's more convient. Plus, if you get a small phone, and a comfortable clip, you never have to run to get a phone call.

    metatopic: if you're considering a cellphone, the speakerphone on the motorola i1000 plus is incredible. Nobody every knows your on a speakerphone.

    ---

    "What is that sound its making?"
  • Buy an Alcatel. You can pop out the battery pack and replace it with AA alkalines. Wonder why every phone maker (and notebook maker) doesn't do this simple thing. I've kept my Alcatel [alcatel.com] going on alkalines for days on off-the-track trips.
  • Nextel allows for international calls. You have to tell them you want it available when you sign up(I assume you can have it later activated.) It doesn't cost anything to have it enabled, but I don't know what they charge for the call. Nextel is more geared to buissness than personal(read, more expensive, w/ features for a workforce, such as direct connect and international calling). It really is worth it if you can get a few friends to sign up too(for the direct connect.)

    ---

    "What is that sound its making?"
  • Wrong.

    Each mobile is in a specific cell and operators can extract very detailed information on the phone's movements (atleast with GSM). Remember, that for a mobile to operate, it's last active location inside the network is always known.

    And GPS is already available in a mobile phone from Benefon [benefon.com], a Finnish manufacturer.

  • I was surprised that I didn't see this mentioned, as I've seen it in every newspaper article about European vs US cells. The US has the world's most developed landline system; whether this is because of old AT&T or the breakup or something else, I don't know. So, as one Wall Street Journal article put it a couple of years ago, a cell phone in Finland might be twice the cost of landlines, whereas in the US it'd be 7 times the cost of landlines.

    In a way Europe has been leapfrogging, like Third World countries. Europe has phones, of course, but they weren't as pervasive or cheap or reliable as US ones. So cells look more attractive. And are easier to implement since Europe is denser, as people have mentioned.

    I have yet to see this as a problem for the US. I like my DSL, and have my doubts that wireless can ever beat wires for large broadband.

  • We generally get at least one >24-hour power outage a year, but the phones never go down.
    Yikes! A 24-hour power outage?! I don't think we've ever had an outage that long! Where do you live? And here I get annoyed if I get more than one power outage (of even a couple seconds) in a four month period :-).

  • If I have the phone, and don't answer, and don't return the call - I will get grilled as to why I didn't when I return home from at 2am.

    Maybe I was out trashing, looking for that discarded Pentium box companies seem to leave out now and then? Gotta turn the phone off, to keep security off my back. It won't matter to the GF - she thinks you were cheating!

    Or how about the boss that calls you on the weekend to come in - right now - or be fired! - while you are at the beach? Your boss can't reach you if you don't have one - "Sorry boss, I was at the beach with my family Saturday - I did get your answering machine message when I returned at 8pm, though!".

    In other words, I know I am not the slave of the phone, and the people calling know that as well - they think you are their slave...

  • Since I moved cross-country to Victoria, BC to begin school last September, I decided to grab a digital cellphone so I would have a chance to place and receive calls while I looked for a place to live. Fortunately, I live in Canada where we have some excellent digital providers and I was able to get a phone which works nationwide with no roaming charges. I am not a heavy phone user so it was not usually a problem to have a limit on my talk time per month. I ended up after some experimentation choosing 200 minutes and unlimited weekends each month. My phone bills were probably a little bit more than a normal landline each month but the phone allowed me to be more flexible in my usage. I consistenly brought it with me and was never out of touch when needed.

    The greatest problem that I found without having a landline was the issue of Internet access. As I was computerless for a good portion of my first year, this did not pose a problem. When I finally was able to pickup a cheap used laptop, I would have loved to have a phoneline to access the Internet. Installing a highspeed connection simply wasn't an option in my case because I was moving shortly. However, high speed is obviously the way to go. Once you have tasted the speed, dialup simply is not an option.

    Although I travelled rarely, we have an excellent digital coverage area in the major centers of Canada.
    I never had no phone access due to faulty celltowers or some company problem. Only once or twice while I was in a known digital area did I notice my phone revert to analog mode and I had my phone on all the time! I cannot say that this is a norm but I am lucky to have a good company.

    Would I recommend this as an alternative to a landline? Yes, with reservations. It has to be the right situation for you. Obviously, it might not work for families, or even couples. But, It might work for you.
  • I have a PCS phone, and usually have a bill around $50 - $75. The various governments here in New York (Albany County, Albany 911, New York, Federal Gov't, Saratoga County) feel the need to tax me between $7 and $12 per month as well.

    15% taxes is quite steep. Until the government gets their mitts off of wireless technology, I think the technology will remain out of reach for many people.


  • I can't get DSL where I'm at, so I'm stuck with cable modem. I use a cell phone for work, so I've ditched the hard line service. $30/month I don't have to put up with. But yes, coverage sucks in the US. The concept of "national coverage" is very new here, as opposed to a patchwork of agreements between tower operators, which is still predominant and probably still comprises US national coverage plans.
  • Amen. This is pretty much what I was getting at. My coverage is good enough in most cases. Since I have the voice-mail and paging capability, I don't see temporary, brief periods of loss of service to be a big deal. Of course, the phone company must hate to hear things like that. After they have gone to all the trouble of making sure they have 99.9% uptime, here are people like me saying that isn't my core concern.
  • I think many people are misunderstanding my question. I'm not saying that going 100% cellular is for everyone. This is not by any means an attempt to say that the entire USA needs to switch to mobile phones and dump their land lines.

    I'm talking about for some people. Specifically, me. When you broaden this discussion to include everyone, it introduces many other problems. But for people in particular situations -- i.e., good coverage in their area, don't make many phone calls, have cable modem and don't need a line for their ISP, etc. -- it seems perfectly reasonable.

  • I live in sydney, Australia.. here pre-paids are quite a big thing and are quite common.. Its about au$100 for a phone which will ussually come with au$20-50 worth of free calls.. Then you just buy a new sim for more cards.. However the call rates are a lot higher for prepaids so it is ussually better to use a plan .. (altho a lot of people see past this fact!!!) Recently we have had a lot of competition and this has brought out quite a few good deals where you buy one simcard, get dirt cheap rates and just pay for what you use...

  • Businesses will never go wireless,

    If you're big enough you can get a mobile company to put up a cell at your site - giving you equal or lower prices than hard lines when you stay in that cell. Then they count on taking back the investment when people are on the road and have to pay to normal prices.

    This of course will only work if the mobile and the regular phone company isn't the same one.

  • But bear in mind that's 99% of _people_ not of area. Great big chunks of the sparsely populated bits still have no coverage.
  • True, but the question really pertained to wheather or not a mobile could replace a normal landline. I suspect that a similar 1% may have difficulty getting a copper line to their homes in such areas.
    --

  • Sorry my friend, but that don't hold water any better. If your GF thinks your out cheating because you don't answer your cell phone, then it's time to get a new GF. If she don't trust you then you have other problems and that is not the fault of your cell phone.

    As for your boss. I don't see where it would matter if you had a cell phone or a regular phone in that case.

  • Personally, I think of cell phones and beepers as leashes - plain and simple.

    I used to think that way until I got one. Now I think it gives me more freedom than anything. I can roam anywhere and anyone that needs me can get in contact with me. I have caller ID on my phone and if I don't want to talk to that person I push a button and send them to voice mail. If I don't want to be bothered at all I turn it off or silence it.

    It is really no different than a regular phone if you treat it that way. Don't give people your cell number, give them your phone number. I don't tell them that I'm giving them my cell number and they never know the difference. Simple, but then again I don't have a hard line at all.

    If you reguard anything as a leash then that is your own fault. When I don't want to be reached I turn it off. In fact my moble just rang and it was someone I didn't want to talk to. I just pushed a button and sent him to voice mail. Pretty soon I'll upgrade my phone and it will voice mail them for me or even better just tell them I don't want to talk to them at all.

  • In the US using sprint, I pay $0.10 a minute any time, anywhere on the sprint network, to any domestic number. Of course, I have to buy 500 minutes a month to get that rate...

  • I don't actually know the ratio of landline to cellular in Japan but it has to be close. I live just south of Tokyo, in Yokosuka, and travel alot up to the city, everyone and I do mean everyone has a cell phone. I know of many people that don't have landlines, but only use there cellular phones. I also know that the way they charge for cellular phones is much better over here than the way they work it in the states, where I am originally from. I don't have a cell phone, yet, but I beleive it is a static rate for calls on Honshu, the main island a little smaller than california, and you don't get charged for incoming calls.
  • If you don't answer the cell phone, people assume you're ignoring them.

    If you don't answer your home phone, people assume (surprise!) you're not home.

    I don't know why, that's just how it is for me. I am expected, for work, to answer my cell phone 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Needless to say, my batteries die.. a lot.

    BTW, someone asked about pricing plans. I'm on AT&T "One-Rate"; 1700 minutes a month, $149.99. Yes, I use them. (Try doing mobile tech support for a company that has 39 offices and two tech support guys.) Quality is great, coverage is spotty (in the Midwest) only in Ft. Wayne, Indiana.

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