Recording your calls | Page 2 | General financial discussion | Discussion forum

Rick, are you kidding me, land lines are one of the miracles of our civilization, $20/month for contact on your terms, and the minute you step out your door no-one can contact you, nobody knows where you are, no electronic tracking device for the hive to have a clue what you're up. I'm not sure you youngsters can even begin to comprehend the sense of freedom that $20 buys!

Bill said
Rick, are you kidding me, land lines are one of the miracles of our civilization, $20/month for contact on your terms, and the minute you step out your door no-one can contact you, nobody knows where you are, no electronic tracking device for the hive to have a clue what you're up. I'm not sure you youngsters can even begin to comprehend the sense of freedom that $20 buys!  

Wow...haven't been a youngster in decades. Thanx!
See your points on tracking etc. Personally...don't care. I have nothing to hide. Wife and I know where each other are at all times, and location tracking can be shut off or set to only let whatever app access your location while you are actually using the app. Don't think a game app or Pizza Hut needs to know where I am 24/7. Tracking certainly came in handy for the FBI and Homeland Security (the Hive???) on Jan 6 though.
It's a personal choice. To me it's more important to be available for that one in a million call you don't ever want to miss, (someone you love has been in an accident, is in the hospital, died, in distress or an emergency) than finding out too late because I was at Wal-Mart getting a tube of Gorilla Glue and missed the call. If freedom is more important, turn off the ringer or power off the phone all together.
I don't get calls from Revenue Canada telling me there's a warrant out for my arrest unless I pay the fine in iTunes cards anymore either. Phone blocks them. Let's see a landline do that, or give you step-by-step directions to anywhere, or do a PoS sale because you forgot your wallet, or take that pic of bigfoot, or a George Floyd (RIP) video, or control your appliances and lights. The miracle is they can do all that and more on a device the size of a pack of cigarettes. And, since I have a mobile, I save $240 a year on a landline.
Can you still find cassettes for those 20 pound Radio Shack answering machines??
Enjoy your (illusion of) freedom
savemoresaveoften....VoIP is useless to me. As often as the internet goes down, last thing I need is to have to call an ambulance and have no phone service. Happened to my mother once already. Fortunately, we made her get a mobile. Don't think she ever used it before that moment but was sure a life saver when she needed it. Please have a backup plan for that situation

We still have a land line and won't be getting rid of it as long as they don't take it away form us. There is one in every room for convenience.

They never have to be replaced or updated, they never get lost or dropped in the toilet, the battery never runs down because there is none (ideal for long period on hold when calling, say, Tangerine or CRA), and some of them will work even if there is a power outage because they don't require an electrical connection - a feature I consider very important, especially as we can look forward to more frequent and severe storms due to climate change; it gives us an extra option. We've had some of them a very long time.

In addition, spouse has a smartphone, which does the things smartphones do very well; and I have a plain jane cell phone for rare use. Even though I've rarely used the latter, I've still had to replace it 3 times over the years due to non-replaceable batteries and other features of planned obsolescence.

If you talk the right way to Telus they will give you a forever $5 rate for home phone. The money is in the internet now..not phone.

My $20 monthly landline is with Bell, actually I think it's a bit less, plus HST, been like that for years now. I have internet and satellite with them too, so it's a bundle deal.

$75 is bull, here's the truth, before any discounts you can get if you bundle or negotiate:
https://www.bell.ca/home_phone

All this made me check my bill, one residence where I have Bell internet and satellite too I pay $20.45 for the landline, another residence where I just have internet too I pay $29.65. Dropping the landline would likely increase the cost of the other services because it's all part of the packages I have, so it's not worth it to me to save a few bucks elsewhere. By not having a monthly cell phone bill I'm saving a lot, from what I hear on here, so I'm not too fussed about a few bucks on a landline. Works for our household, we're not big phone people, so I'm leaving as is. Plus my Bell shares have treated me very well over the last 40 years or so, so all in all I'm very happy to have Bell in my life.

For all those that reported $10-$20 a month landline, its only doable if one has a bundled package. Rogers / Bell etc offer a stand alone landline anywhere close to that price.
Also for Rogers, one has to be careful as they offer both traditional landline type and VOIP. The traditional still need a digital box but connects to the traditional plugs etc. However its reserve power is only 8-12hrs. So its not as secure as an old school Bell landline if power loss is a concern too.

savemoresaveoften said
Also for Rogers, one has to be careful as they offer both traditional landline type and VOIP.

The traditional still need a digital box but connects to the traditional plugs etc. However its reserve power is only 8-12hrs. So its not as secure as an old school Bell landline if power loss is a concern too.  

Not sure about “traditional “ Rogers. If it needs a digital box with battery back up and is plugged into power as well and has an incoming coax line to it and it is back fed into the closest phone jack..I believe it is VoIP too. And alarms can work with this set up. Shaw home lines are same.

Traditional would be a copper line from the street to a central box in house and all jacks in house are fed from the box. This copper line will include a low voltage wire. So a conventional hard wired phone will work in a power outage. That is if the inbound wiring has power. In some provinces power must be supplied by customer on this type of installation. The one thing that is not well understood is a cordless phone may cause your phone system to not work at all on any type phone system. The newer cordless set will “if” you leave the handset in the base station to provide backup power. And of course you can move other handsets to the base station if one runs out of power.

So you need to know what kind of phone system you have and how your cordless phone set works with it and if your wired alarm will work with it.

If you are running with a traditional line with power supplied by Telco then you can always run with one hardwired phone for use during a power outage.

Some VoIP phone systems using house power and internet becomes non useable during a power outage and/or internet outage. And your alarm may also not work during an outage.