Don’t cut your wired phone service just yet.
If you're still thinking of
dropping your wired home office phone service the
next few paragraphs may prove interesting. You just
might be surprised at some of the advantages of
traditional wired phone services. There are a number
of things to consider before canceling your home
office phone service and going totally wireless with
only a cell phone.
Cellular phone service has
made it possible for us to stay in touch regardless
of where we happen to be. But, will we really be
happy with the service we get by transferring our
home office phone number to the cell phone and
cutting off that wired connection?
Don’t forget about Internet
service. If it's via cable modem service, wireless
Internet or satellite, then no problem. If you're
using DSL or plan to, that's provided on your
telephone line. Of course Dial-up Internet service,
the most popular online connection, is strictly a
telephone line service. You can get higher speed
cellular-type Internet service for your laptop
computer, but check the prices, it’s easily double
or more than what you're paying for dial-up service.
Telephone lines are available everywhere, but most
other forms of Internet service aren't, so check
availability.
Cell phone minutes are an
issue because you only get so many a month, unlike
most standard local phone plans. The penalty for
overrunning your time allotment can be pretty
severe. With everyone wanting to use the same cell
phone for personal calls, those minutes can go
quickly. Choosing a larger package of minutes can
waste money when you don't use them.
With only one phone in the
house, what about extensions? Phones have become so
inexpensive that we typically have one in every
major room. Some have speaker phone capabilities,
which are great when two or more want to join in a
conversation or participate in a tele-seminar.
There's no picking up an extension with cell phones.
It's strictly one person at a time.
What about your security? When you call 911 on a
wired or cordless phone, the emergency dispatcher
knows exactly where you are. That's because
automatic number identification has a database of
addresses for the phone numbers. Every telephone
wire goes one and only one place. This is not the
case with cellular service. It's up to you to tell
the operator where you are, if you can. Future
improvements will help to track your cell phone, but
it is going to be years before most areas have that
capability in place. Do you have a home security
system that notifies authorities? Unless you have a
much more expensive dedicated line just for the
system. The system can’t make a call to the
monitoring service. It needs a phone line to do
that.
Your satellite receiver or
digital video recorder plugs into the phone line to
update programming schedules and let you place
orders for pay per view movies. Clearly that won’t
work either. Don’t about your FAX machine. Unless
you switch totally to computer based faxing, those
machines need a phone line connection. That's also
true for those all-in-one printer/scanner/copier/fax
units. The FAX is done via phone call.
By the way, how's cellular
reception in all areas of your house including the
basement? If it’s perfect, great. More likely there
are areas where it's not so great.
Before you get carried away and ditch your landline,
that handy pair of copper wires that connect your
home to the rest of the world, give it some thought.
Perhaps with a little shopping, you can reduce the
costs of your local and long distance services to a
point where you can easily afford both wired and
cellular phones...the best of both worlds.
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