If you’ve been searching the internet high and low for an infographic on how to connect or disconnect your phone, well then, you’ve come to the right place.
The new phone book for Mid-Coast Maine came in the mail yesterday. And considering it included over 120 towns from Freeport to Searsport, Maine, it was a thin one. Over 120 towns, and the phone book was less than an inch thick. Can you believe it?
Granted, Maine is only the 41st most populated state in the US, but still, the HH and I were both pretty amazed at the size of the phone book. And, that phone books are still even being printed.
But more interesting than that, was that there was so much “filler” in the phone book that it turned out to be a pretty good read.
For instance;
There was an entire page with an infographic on how to connect or disconnect your phone. Imagine that!
Are there really people out there in the world who don’t know how to plug in or unplug a phone? And are these the same people who have to read the instructions on the back of a Pop Tarts box?
It makes me wonder though, how many people out there still have a landline? Do you?
~Mavis
Julie says
I was wondering the same thing. I know of only 2 people with landlines still and for both of them, there are issues with the phone working properly half the time.
Alo says
Yes, we still have a land line, and i knew how to connect/ disconnect it already. We like to keep ours since our kids don’t have cell phones, and if hubby is at work and I go to run an errand, the kids can still call if they need me/there’s an emergency, etc.
Alo says
Lol, I hope that didn’t sound snooty! I put in an emoji after saying I knew how to disconnect it :P, but I’m not sure if that shows up on the comment. 🙂
We haven’t had troubles with our land line working. (It’s how we sell fresh eggs, too. We have a sign out with the land line number, and locals use that to see if we have eggs available).
Mary3M says
I have a landline as well as a cell phone. It’s a comfort level for me – dating back to the turn of the century (can you believe I’m using that phrase??) when those of us programmers had to have a land line that was directly connected – as in no portable phones. Or made possible thru electricity! And my land line is separate from my internet and cable. My land line is way more reliable than my cell phone especially when the electricity goes out. (Though with a whole house generator that shouldn’t happen – unless like the storms in Texas that happened a few years ago – our natural gas supply is disrupted. Old habits are hard to break.
Elaine says
We still have a landline because our cell phone reception is spotty. Plus, sometimes I just want to hold a real phone in my hand when I have a long chat with a friend!!
Jeanine says
Living in the country, we have to have a landline because when the electricity goes out, we can call out for help or find out when we will have power restored. No cell service where we live unless you walk a 10th of a mile down the road. Also, my husband can’t hear very well and only talks on a landline and not the cordless phone which I love. I can cook or do just about anything and still talk on the phone. Always busy here with something. I even take the cordless out to the garden if I’m expecting an important call.
Pam says
We live out in the country too (Leavenworth WA) and only have cell phones now. We’re dependent on the Internet to make them work, however… We bought a UPS (Uninterrupted Power Supply) box from Amazon that provides battery back up to the modem, which works perfectly in a power outage or other. Just a suggestion;)
Lynne says
I have both a landline and a cell phone, and am (slowly) learning to rely on the cell phone more and more. I admit to abandoning paper phone books with hardly a backward glance since the internet happened. My county had a white pages phone book that was about 4 inches thick and the print was too small to read.
I cannot look at a paper phone book without recalling a scene in an old Steve Martin movie (The Jerk?) where he is running around the front yard screaming ecstatically “The new phone book’s here! The new phone book’s here!”
Lynne
Dianne says
That was a big thing thing when the new telephone book came out. every year! loved to look up friends, own phone#, and go through yellow pages! And thought the kid’s line meant you were wealthy! Must of had lots go girls fighting over the one household phone!anne
Donna Knight says
I had a landline up until 2 months ago when I moved. I did not have good cell phone coverage at my old home.
Jeanine says
Mavis…..I guess the question is…do you have a landline?
Mona R McGinnis says
I still have a landline with no intention of giving it up. It works when the power goes out, doesn’t require charging, no dropped calls. Problems with landlines not working properly are often connected to the service providers not being willing to repair existing infrastructure. Unfortunately, internet & cell service accessibility is not equal across the board. There are many places geographically where service is just not available. Unfortunately, landline service providers are reluctant to take that into account. Try finding a phone number for someone without a landline these days.
Mel says
We lose power all.the.time, and our internet is also unreliable, so I wanted to get a traditional landline for emergencies, but it’s not even an option where we live. The best we could do was a Verizon 5G phone with a UPS (uninterruptible power source).
eliz says
We live in Montana and there is no cell service in our area. We have a land line because our phone company requires we have one with our internet service.
Kathy says
Same here for a little town in SW Washington. The phone company here has the market cornered and we have to have a landline for internet service.
Jennifer says
I remember getting dh to finally give up a landline when we both got cellphones in 2010 or 2011. Other than family and each other, the only calls we would ever receive were from drs. or the kids’ schools. We never looked back.
Ds works in a call center for spectrum and is on the Internet team, which also covers home phone, he works in Tampa so for their region, there are more than a few calls. He always enjoys them because it’s inevitably “A sweet granny who hated to bother me, but was so grateful that I was able to help her and I feel like I was helping someone else’s GJ”, who was his grandmama that we all loved.
Dawn M Carvalho says
I have a landline phone number because Comcast makes me bundle my services so they’re “cheaper”. That being said, there has never been a phone plugged into it.
Peg says
No longer have a landline, we would if it was cheaper, cell phone service does go down periodically in the Rocky Mountain region where we live.
Margo says
We have a landline as well. Our main phone is our cell phones, but we keep the landline in case of emergency. You can still call 911 from our home and get a response to an exact address. I was oddly nostalgic when you told me you got a paper phone book. Haven’t seen one in years around here. I think you can still request one, though.
Kath says
We haven’t had a traditional phone company landline for at least 15 years. We have an internet phone as a home phone and we each have cell phones. We do still have a traditional dial wall phone on the wall in the basement, not hooked up, just to make the grandkids ask “what is that thing?”…which they did…LOL.
Nancy H. says
We have terrible cell reception in our home so after living here a year and have times when we couldn’t use our phones if we lost internet connection we added a landline. We happen to live in a good sized city in the PNW but the hills around us really mess with the cell connection. Either that or the ham radios in the neighborhood. We decided that the ability to call 911 in an emergency was worth it.
Meg C says
I haven’t had a landline since the year 2001.
My mom just gave hers up about a year ago but I wish she hadn’t because she is much harder to get ahold of now (maybe that’s why she gave it up! LOL) and am thinking of asking her to get it reinstated. She lives by herself and when I don’t hear from her in a few days, I get nervous.
Most phone companies/services offer reduced rates for fixed-income senior citizen landlines.
Ashley Bananas says
My mother also let go of her land line and her not being glued to the cell phone it makes it harder to get a hold of her because she leaves the cell phone in her purse and then doesn’t hear it. I would actually like for her to get the landline reinstated as well.
HollyG says
We had a land line for a long time. We live in an area (in the sticks) with poor cell service (we can lean out from the second floor deck) and had the land line for emergencies and power outages. Then ‘Clear Creek Telephone and Television Cooperative’ decided to attach the phone line’s ability to work to our internet. Now, if the internet or the power goes out, no telephone – – and no more paying for a landline for us.
Tammy says
That’s pretty funny. I guess those who have grown up without a landline would be confused?
To answer your question, we disconnected our landline about 2 years ago, but my husband and I were just talking about getting a landline again. It will be a while till we get our daughter a phone and it would be nice to know she could call someone/911 if she is home by herself. Right now, when I leave her home by herself I leave my phone with her.
Karen A. says
I think the last time we had a landline was probably 20 years ago, when we moved to this city–we kept getting calls from bill collectors for the previous owners of the number and eventually just got tired of answering them or having to use the answering machine to screen our calls. It’s been all cell numbers since then. We use Tracfone, and have had pretty good service overall.
Fun fact, when I was growing up in a fairly smallish town my mom refused to walk to work (she was a teacher at the school less than a mile from our house!) and I asked her why, and she claimed it was because if she did that the kids from school would be able to follow her and figure out where she lived, and she didn’t want that.
I pointed out that we were listed in the phone book, with our address, and we were the only listing with our (unusual) last name. Basically anybody could figure out where we lived by looking in the phone book. And no, my dad wouldn’t pay extra for an unlisted number. 😀 I think the real reason she preferred to drive to work was so she could go out for coffee at her favorite restaurant before going to work! (No, they never made coffee at home in the mornings, even though we had a coffee maker. I don’t understand them either.)
J in OH-IO says
Yes, we still have a landline and we all have cell phones. The landline works when the power goes out and our cell coverage and reception is spotty here. Sometimes the local businesses cannot be reached if their internet is out since they don’t have landlines which is frustrating. We also have a landline for medical emergencies. We always want to be able to dial the landline phone for help if needed!
Honeybee says
Meg C and Ashley Bananas-We asked HB’s father who lived alone until 91 years old to email us every day. He was reluctant at first but eventually started doing it. Such a relief to get up every morning and find an email from him.
Meg C says
My mom doesn’t have internet at her house & has a “dumb” phone – she would have to go to the library to email me. I asked her to text at least every other day but she’s fiercely independent & was offended because she thought I think she needs babysat.
I’m glad your father-in-law bought into your proposed system; as you said, it was a huge relief for your family to regularly hear from him.
Linda Sand says
We sold nearly everything we owned and moved into a motorhome to go see the USA in 2008. We’ve had no landline since then. We could have one now that we are settled again but why bother? With my phone now in my pocket I never have to run to answer it. 🙂
Mary says
The illustration is hilarious. They don’t get printed telephone books like we used to and I am not sure they are even printed here (Salem, Oregon). We had our landline number for decades (40+ years). We didn’t want to give it up. We’ve had cell phones for quite a while too (20 years?). 10 years ago we bought an OOMA that runs over the Wifi and we could keep the landline phone number. I think the OOMA costs us like $4-5/month, or something like that, once you buy the piece. It works great unless our internet is out.
Sue S. says
What’s an OOMA?
Vy says
I had a landline when the kids were still living at home so there’d always be a way to get a call out in an emergency, without having to search for a cell phone. I never gave out the number, no one had it, not even us, yet the calls were incessant, all of them spam. So we turned the ringer off eventually. Never did use it for an emergency, but it gave me peace of mind knowing it was there.
Glenda Rainbolt says
We keep a landline to use when anything requires a phone number to be used. We have caller ID and if we don’t want to answer they can leave a message. That keeps both of our cell phone pretty much clear of unwanted calls, sales pitches and random companies calling. I do a lot of surveys on point sites and it saves me from ‘FOLLOW UP” calls also.
Nancy D says
We live in a funky valley that doesn’t allow a clear cell phone signal. Would love to get rid of the cost of a landline. Tried a satellite cell phone service and that was spotty also
SueD says
We have a landline and mobiles. It’s a Comcast thing. The landline is the number we give out when we need to give one, and we have it forwarded to our mobiles. Up until 2019, OH was required to have a landline for work.
Heidi N. says
We do have a landline. For emergencies & power outages as others have mentioned. Our kids who are too young for cellphones always have a way to call 911 or a family member from home if necessary.
Nancy says
We have a landline via our cable/internet company. I’ve heard it is good to keep one in case cell towers go out or something. The cell is with another company and NOT with cable/internet/phone company. Oh they want me to change that however I won’t. If the landline phone, cable and internet aren’t working, which happens more than one would think, I use cell phone to report outage. .
Loy says
We live in a rural mobile home and cannot get a cell phone signal indoors. I have a Tracphone to use when I am not at home. We have a wireless internet landline so if our power goes out, we have no phone. In an emergency, we would have to get in the car and drive until there is cell phone service which is a mile or two away. We changed because regular phone service was costing us $80 a month and this cost us $10.
Sue S. says
Wow, lotsa comments on this topic. We gave up our landline years ago but I still have a yellow rotary dial wall phone in the basement. You just never know when cell phones are gonna get so complicated that I might wanna revert to a landline again. Does anyone ever wonder who has their old landline number now? I do.
Sue S. says
Wow after reading all of the above comments, I’m going to look into lowering by cable bill by re-instating my landline. Might as well if it’s cheaper. My 9 year old doesn’t have a cell phone, and won’t have one for quite some time and my cell is complicated to try to use. The landline for emergencies sounds like a good idea. I could unplug it from the basement and bring it up to the kitchen where the outlet in the wall is still covered over by a Longaberger basket. Thanks for all of the ideas everyone! Sue
Pam says
We do not have a landline but my husband’s parents and his grandma still do. What surprises me is how expensive they are now. It’s crazy!
Lisa says
I was reading through all the comments to see if there were any other weirdos like myself and husband that a. Still have a landline and b. don’t have mobile phones!!
Mind you its getting harder and harder without the mobile phones as banks and other companies are obsessed with texting verification codes. Even dealing with our phone provider is a total nightmare because they don’t have a workaround for people without mobile phones when they muck something up with the account and need to verify its me.
Apart from that… we enjoy leaving the house and not getting phone calls haha.
Meg C says
Lisa, I have friends that have a “dumb” mobile phone (like a flip phone) & they only turn it on when they need it for things like verification codes. They use a pre-paid minutes service.
Tricia says
Landline here only because we are rural and 1) lose power frequently in winter 2) even when we have power, internet is spotty and there’s only one provider.