After years of resisting an inevitable trend nationwide, I finally saw the light Thursday night and have switched our service to straight DSL and dropped local phone service altogether.
We can be more easily reached by cell anyway.
The point of no return was when I realized that we were paying over $400 annually for what essentially came down to caller ID service. Taken together with a recent cellphone plan change, one utility bill (water) and another bill essentially becomes free each month with the new cost savings going forward.
Our cell phones have pretty much become our cordless phones even at home, so there have been no benefits of having local in-house phone service. We got burned this winter with several triple digit cell bills. When the bills were mentioned to our service provider T-Mobile and the fact that we were on the wrong plan was undeniable, they provided a credit to us since we have had the service since 2000.
But the biggest discovery of this entire process is that the local phone number that we have had since November 1992 does not get thrown back on the open market after all. The number is already permanently assigned as our DSL number anyway and can be reactivated at any other time in the future.
If this single fact had been known earlier, then the decision of dropping the local service could have been made a long time ago.
I know that keeping the number was a legacy of "old school" thinking that my parents and grandparents would have had years ago:)
Another thing that was interesting to me alone possibly is that my wife Wyteria made a comment to the effect of "I was ready months ago" when I explained my logic of the changed opinion:) So you know how the wives are when it is said and done:)
I hope the above discoveries will help someone else if you have been thinking about it.
Peace!
We can be more easily reached by cell anyway.
The point of no return was when I realized that we were paying over $400 annually for what essentially came down to caller ID service. Taken together with a recent cellphone plan change, one utility bill (water) and another bill essentially becomes free each month with the new cost savings going forward.
Our cell phones have pretty much become our cordless phones even at home, so there have been no benefits of having local in-house phone service. We got burned this winter with several triple digit cell bills. When the bills were mentioned to our service provider T-Mobile and the fact that we were on the wrong plan was undeniable, they provided a credit to us since we have had the service since 2000.
But the biggest discovery of this entire process is that the local phone number that we have had since November 1992 does not get thrown back on the open market after all. The number is already permanently assigned as our DSL number anyway and can be reactivated at any other time in the future.
If this single fact had been known earlier, then the decision of dropping the local service could have been made a long time ago.
I know that keeping the number was a legacy of "old school" thinking that my parents and grandparents would have had years ago:)
Another thing that was interesting to me alone possibly is that my wife Wyteria made a comment to the effect of "I was ready months ago" when I explained my logic of the changed opinion:) So you know how the wives are when it is said and done:)
I hope the above discoveries will help someone else if you have been thinking about it.
Peace!
1 comment:
Now you can get unlimited minutes and text and web browsing onmost big cell phone carriers, the only benefit for a land line would be in an emergency if the power ever went out in the area and it affected your local cell towers, you would be sunk, such as what happened in NYC when they suffered a black out and only pay phones would work
I just wanted to issue an official invite to Blogging While Brown, the first international conference for Black bloggers. It is an opportunity for us to move past a single panel at SXSW, Blogher, or Yearly Kos. You can learn more at www.bloggingwhilebrown.com and the blog, BloggingWhileBrown.blogspot.com You might consider putting together a panel for the BWB conference as well. It is in Atlanta, GA July 25-27, 2008. Hope to see you there.
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