Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Giving up the landline phone for cell-only service.

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Topic: Giving up the landline phone for cell-only service.

Frank Angel
Film God

Posts: 5305
From: Brooklyn NY USA
Registered: Dec 1999

posted 12-24-2008 07:18 PM

They are saying that more and more people are now using justs their cell phones for their primary telephone service. My nephew, in fact, does just that. It's a cheaper way to go as it avoids all those taxes and fees stacked on fees the landline phone company charges.

For me, there are two problems with that scenario: I HATE the physicality of the cell phone itself. It's small and clumsy; I like a big earpiece that covers my ear and a handset that I can hold to my ear with my shoulder and grip with a full hand. The cell phone is just too damn wimpy. But even more of a negative is that in our apartment, we've got a fairly elaborate telephone network with three phones in the bedroom -- one on either side of the bed and one on my desk, one each in the kitchen, living room, bathroom (yes, bathroom so it can be answered in the shower) and two in the guest room, one by the bed and one at a small workbench. We want whatever telephone service we use to be able to be reached from any of those phones.

So, if we were going to use our cell service, how would it be possible to interconnect to my existing telephones? If the cell providers don't have some kind of an interface that can just hook up to that existing circuit that drives all those phones, then it means you would have to carry that stupid little cell phone wherever you go in the house, otherwise you would miss calls if you were in a room where the cell was not.

Even worse, even if I do carry it around the house ALL THE TIME (never gonna happen), the one great thing that the landline does for us is that it connects to a little device which senses when the telephone line is in use and it then drops the sound system volume down 15db (or off, if so desired). This is something I just couldn't do without. I have speakers in every room in the apartment and we play music, tv, film sound throughout the house much of the time when we are home and almost all of the time when either of us are home alone, so if I am in the bedroom and a call comes in, with a cell phone I would have to run to the living room to turn down the system; that's going backward in our own "personal" technology about 30 years.

So here's a question -- does anyone know if there IS an interface that would allow a cell phone to send a duplex signal to a standard telephone line? Surely with all that cell technology and bluetooth stuff, they could figure out a way so that regular telephones could be used with cellphone systems. If we can't get our existing household telephones to work with the cellphone service, then we will never be convinced to use the cell service as our primary telephone service.

And PS -- the way we get around the "Telephone Company" prices and their never-ending nickel & dimeing us to death -- we use Vonage off the cable service. It powers all our phones right out of the Vonage VoIP broadband router. And it's $24.95 a month....never changes no matter how much we use it for long distance, plus, it comes with every feature the phone company offers and more. Whereas the phone company charges you individually for each and every feature, Vonage has all those features, (stuff like call forwarding, voice mail, call waiting, etc.) all included in their monthly rate. Still, I wouldn't need Vonage at, IF I could get the cell to work the existing phones.

Any ideas?