Pre paid phones

[George]

verizon, and as low as 19 bucks a month for republic wireless, with lots of options in the middle f that price range.

All of our family and most of our friends are on Verizon wireless. So there are never any extra charges when we call each other. We initially removed the long distance plan on the landline and then shortly thereafter cancelled it.

Also at one time wired carriers maintained their systems and you could always count on dial tone being there. Not so much anymore. I think a good wireless carrier (they are definitely nor all the same) is more reliable today.

Thats easy. There are BT docks you can buy to connect your cellphone to your house phones.

[mdauria]

I had tracfone/net10 and after awhile I ended up switching to AT&T gophone.

I got tracfone and signed up for a monthly plan, every month they charge yo= ur card 10 bucks and you get 50 minutes (If you buy the right phone they gi= ve you double minutes). I signed my wife up too, then also recommended it t= o friends. My friends ended up having trouble where they would charge their= cards but not send them any minutes. After a year I had the same trouble t= oo. I think the problem was that since they don't own the network (my tracf= one used AT&T network) they would basically send a message to your phone to= tell it to add more minutes and I think it wasn't making it through someti= mes.

I dropped them and switched to gophone. The good thing about the gophone, e= ventually I wanted to switch to a smartphone, when I went to the AT&T store= they gave me credit for all my gophone minutes and switched me to a real A= T&T account (smart phones aren't technically allowed with gophone contracts= ).

[krw]

verizon, and as low as 19 bucks a month for republic wireless, with lots of options in the middle f that price range.

When I switched the cost was over twice that. Add in any long distance and

*two* cell phones were obvious winners. I don't even use 10% of my minutes since almost everyone I talk to is "free", one way or another. A side benefit is fewer marketeer calls.

You can get an adapter for a cell phone to wired. My solution is to not answer.

[DerbyDad03]

rizon, and as low as 19 bucks a month for republic wireless, with lots of o= ptions in the middle f that price range.

For $20 a month, I keep the landline so we can use that number for anything we think will "track us" or give out our number.

All of our robo-calls and other crap comes in over the land line. Sometimes we go a week without checking the messages. When we do, it's all junk.

We never answer it when we're home and when we look at the call log

99% of the calls are from 800 or long distance numbers from places we've never heard off. 99% of the time, once the answering machine answers, the call hangs up, so we know it wasn't important. That's the reason we left the physical answering machine on the line. It's easy to check and we can listen in on calls coming in when we're home.

We just don't want that junk transitioning over to our cell phones.

[Robert Neville]

There are wireless home phones with a cell dock that allows you to use handhelds to make and receive calls through your cell.

[AaronL]

They now have bluetooth enabled cordless phone sets that work with both landline/cell and cell alone. Just throw your cell on the table when you get home and you can answer/call from any of your cordless phones. The only drawback is that they don't do text so if you're a big texter you still have to carry the cell around.