I'm on a family plan with unlimited talk and text, $3000 per year. So it does cost more than the toilet.

In the 50's we had party lines and one to three digit phone numbers, fire department was 4 and the gas station was 66. Irene the operator had a switchboard on her front porch that was glassed in and she even slept next to that damn thing. The phone book was two sheets of paper stapled and folded to make 8 pages.

The sixties brought a relay switch board, rotary dial, and eventually at extra cost came touch tone.

The seventies brought the break up of Ma Bell. At last you could buy your own phones, and answering machines.

The eighties brought the Motorola "Brick" Mobile phone. The difference between a cordless phone and a mobile phone was range (about 10 miles from town) and $1.45 per minute. We got Compuserve a dial up server that preceded America on Hold. No pictures, just text, but with advertisements on the top or bottom of every new screen you pulled up.

In 1997 I could print the Eunuch Archive index on one page.

Modern automotive radio's with "Blue tooth" will turn off the radio and answer your phone without fumbling for your phone. I get my email, can surf the web (smart phones make WAP {web adapted to phone} a thing of the past), get directions, download music, watch CNN, sports and entertainment on demand, and take 8 meg photo's and movies. (higher resolution than my first Sony floppy disc camera.)

ATT is bringing out the next generation I-phone June 6.

I am considering becoming an I-sheep like the rest of the family.

Paolo wrote: Mon May 03, 2010 7:21 am Texting was invented by a gang of carpal tunnel surgeons.

I know teenagers that text each other while sitting in the same room.

I've actually only seen a rotary dial phone on old TV shows and movies. As for me, I've never had a landline except when I was younger and living with my parents. Since moving out when I was almost 16, I've only had a cell phone. Most of my friends only have cell phones. In fact, there is no one my age that I know of who has a land phone. A few of my friends use Skype but I have yet to learn that.

Anyway, I really

Dave (imported) wrote: Tue Apr 20, 2010 8:47 pm don't see the need for a land line

today. And no, I'm not one of those people who are addicted to their cell phones. When I arrive to see friends, get to a party, or am watching a movie with friends I turn off my phone. Once everyone's arrived, there's no need to keep your phone on since you're there to see them, not to talk with other people.

As for texting, it's included in most plans so that you can have unlimited texting for next to nothing.

...

Anyway, I really

Dave (imported) wrote: Tue Apr 20, 2010 8:47 pm don't see the need for a land line

today...

If I could find a way to keep my phone number and not have two phones but the landline is 30 years old and to go back and change 30 years of one phone number on all those legal forms would take months if not years. It's daunting.

Dave (imported) wrote: Mon May 03, 2010 4:38 pm If I could find a way to keep my phone number and not have two phones but the landline is 30 years old and to go back and change 30 years of one phone number on all those legal forms would take months if not years. It's daunting.

You can tele-port your old number to a cell phone. Very easily done. I ditched my land-line two years ago. No regrets. I still have clients who do fax, so I keep a line for that alone. Trying to get them to do scanning and emailing today. Soon, fax line is history.

I for one mostly use a cellphone, but no way am I giving up my landline -- I think that, as the energy (and thus economic) crisis starts to really get underway in earnest, 2 things will happen: rates will go through the roof, and network maintenance will begin to get very, very sketchy. That is, if the companies running these things survive at all (which they may not do if their subscriber bases wither away too far). I think that the traditional telephone networks are the most likely to be nationalized and treated as essential infrastructure if things really collapse that far -- so the landline seems like a useful redundancy for such a case ... which may, of course, never happen in our lifetimes, but it's sometimes safer to plan for the worst-case scenario...!