Frugal Tip: Ditch your Land-Line

Most people have a traditional telephone, even when they have a cellular phone in their pocket or strapped to their “utility belt” 24/7. So long as your coverage is decent at your home, why do you need a landline? (We’ll answer that question in a minute.)

What is a landline?

According to Wikipedia, a “landline” is a telephone line which travels through a solid medium, either metal wire or optical fiber. It’s generally cheaper than a cellular, satellite, or radio phone, but it’s stuck in one place, and you usually don’t have much selection of “landline providers” and get stuck with the local telco.

Landlines, even cheap ones, cost about $12 bucks a month for basic service, not including call forwarding, callerID, or the ability to make long-distance calls. “Long distance” calls may not be what you think in this day and age; you may not be able to call into the next county, or your friend’s cell phone because it’s “long distance”.

Why might you need a landline?

There are several distinct advantages to a landline over a cellular phone, and disadvantages, too.

• Landlines don’t take power: rather, they don’t require external power. Landlines get their power from the line itself, so if the power goes out, chances are you can still use your landline phone – unless it’s a cordless phone, in which case it’ll probably go out because the base station needs power. This isn’t a big deal when comparing to cell phones, but it will come in to play later.
• 911: generally speaking, a landline is tethered to a physical address, so if you call for help, changes are they know where you’re calling from, even if you can’t talk. Also, most every landline will know where to route your call if you call 911.
• Others in the house: If you have children or elderly people in the house, chances are you want to have a phone wired to the wall so they can call if they need to.
• No cell phone: if you don’t have a cell phone, obviously, you need a phone of some sort.

Non-landline options

There are several options to go with rather than a landline.

• Get a dedicated cell phone, always tethered to a wall charger so it’s always ready when you need it. This option may cost you an additional $10 per month if you have a family-plan for your cell phone. If you don’t have a cell phone or this type of plan, this option won’t help.
• Get a pre-paid cell phone, always tethered to a wall charger. These puppies are pretty cheap to buy, and can be “recharged” with more minutes as you go. Rather than paying for a “subscription” to the cell phone service, you’re buying pre-paid chunks of minutes. Up-front you’re looking about $30 to $50 for the phone, then $0.25 per minute (or more). If you don’t use the phone for anything but a backup, it’s a decent option.
• Get a VoIP line. Assuming you already have high-speed internet at your house, you can sign up with a Voice Over IP phone company for HUGE savings! Vonage offers nearly unlimited calling for $25/month. If you have a T-Mobile family plan their @Home VoIP service costs $10/month. If you’re more technically inclined, you can go with a VoIP wholesaler like Les.Net for as little as CAD$0.99/month, plus CAD$0.011/minute (or CAD$3.99/month unlimited).

Downsides to VoIP

• VoIP uses power: both for the ATA for the internet modem, so if you want your phone to work in a power outage you need a battery backup (UPS) to power the VoIP box and the modem. That’s easy enough.
• VoIP runs over the innerwebs: that means your VoIP line is only as reliable than your internet connection. At my house my internet connection is more stable and reliable than my old landline service was.
• VoIP does 911 “differently”, or not at all: because you can literally pack up your VoIP box and tote it on vacation with you (or to a new house, or off to college, etc.) it doesn’t have a definite location, so you’ll need to tell the operator your physical location. Les.net doesn’t offer 911 service (and I’m not certain why they don’t offer “programmable 3-digit speed dial” to enable their customers to specify what 3-digit codes reroute to. (Les, are you listening?)
• VoIP is a little more technical: Unlike a landline, you don’t always just plug it in and get a dial tone… Vonage and T-Mobile VoIP are pretty easy to set up, Les.net is quite complicated for the average user (even I needed some help from a buddy). Lot’s to configure with custom VoIP solutions, but that also gives you much more flexibility and options.

Upsides to VoIP

• VoIP is cheap.
• VoIP is anywhere you have an internet connection (villages in remote India are getting phone service for the first time thanks to wireless internet and VoIP).
• When all “circuits are busy” on a landline system (say in a regional emergency), VoIP can skip around the clog and get your call out.
• VoIP goes with you, to college, when you move, on vacation, even overseas.
• You can have a “local” VoIP line for your out-of-state relatives to call you at without them incurring long-distance charges.

Savings

I’m going to assume that you’ve got a high-speed internet connection, that you decided to go with Les.net and purchased an ATA, are going with their “unlimited” plan, and that Canadian dollars and US dollars have a 1:1 exchange rate for these calculations.

I’m also going to assume that you’re like I was back before I made the switch, and were paying approximately $50/month for your landline (including some long-distance, callerID, etc.). However, if you’re just using this as a “backup” line, we’ll assume for our math that you’re paying $25/month for a bare-bones landline. That means you’re spending $600/year on your backup phone (or twice that if you use it as a primary phone).

Your VoIP solution through Les.net (at a 1:1 exchange rate) is only $47.88, for a savings of $552.12!

Tune in for our next Frugal Tip! You can thank me later™.