Wireless phones offer you convenience, letting you talk from virtually any location. However, landline phones still provide some advantages compared to wireless phones which should make you hesitate if you are considering discarding them. What many people do not realize is that mobile phones can’t provide all the advantages of landline phones and therefore, a combination of landline and wireless phone use may be the right decision for you to make.
We all have been using landlines phones for years for all the obvious reasons. We know that they are tried and tested. While there are many aspects of a landline phone to keep you holding on to it, a few of them simply remain unparalleled even in today’s times.
- Strong Reliability: Many of us have faced the problem of an important call getting dropped, mid-sentence, due to a poor cellphone signal. Many a times, we face the embarrassment of not being able to respond to a business communication or the failure to address a family problem on a call. Whatever it is, home phones do not leave you in the lurch that way because they do not run on a wireless connection. The clarity on a landline phone is unbeatable and connectivity, unquestionable.
- Local Tracking and Help: If an emergency call is made from a home phone, the 911 dispatch centers can find the exact address from where the landline call originated. The problem seems small at the surface but is actually not. In emergencies where someone needs assistance because they are having a heart attack in their apartment, even if the dispatch center nails their cellphone’s location, it won’t make out which floor the patient was calling from.
- Functional without Charging: In the case where you miss putting your phone on a charger, it might not be able to make a call the next time you pick it up. The device could ditch you right when you need it the most. Many of us forget to plug in our devices during our busy routines. In such times, we are grateful for our landline phones that always are ready.
So, if you’re thinking of going without a landline phone, remember that you might miss it from time to time. Working solely on a mobile connection might help you with a bit of cost saving, but could also cost you your safety, work efficiency and network coverage.
In the current price war among US wireless carriers, T-Mobile’s latest burst has led to a reduction in the price of its unlimited shared data plan to $100 a month, thereby making it a 29 percent reduction. T-Mobile announced on its website this Monday that it has decided to offer unlimited calling, text and 4G LTE data for two lines on its new Simple Choice plan for a price of $100 a month, Customers can hang on up to eight extra lines for $40 for each line.
T-Mobile’s move is seen as a respite for users who constantly feel harassed with the confusion and complexity of the carriers’ shared data plans because of punishing overage penalties unless you police your own family’s data usage or up your data bucket and spend more every month. Along with this move, T-Mobile has also confirmed that it is resurrecting a promotion that offered a family of four 10GB of 4G LTE data for $100. Like the previous promotion, which T-Mobile began in October, customers will receive 2.5GB per line of data until 2016, when the plan switches to 1GB per line.
These aggressive moves in a continuous pattern are part of a cut-throat effort by the carriers to win new customers and retain the existing ones. T-Mobile’s Uncarrier campaign and the CEO John Legere’s bold attitude has helped in winning over consumers and driving its turnaround, which together has led to the addition of 2.3 million new customers to the group in the last quarter. Cutting the price of its unlimited shared data plans will further benefit the organization and help it scale up its reach to the customers.
In a quiet move, the global communications and technology leader Verizon has changed its ETF policy. The telecom giant has taken this step in alignment with the growth of its EDGE early upgrade program and the diminution of the 2-year agreement. Both these situations have forced the carrier to make adjustments in order to recoup the value of increasingly expensive smart devices. Also, it’s quite probable that the changes are also aimed at the promotions of ETF payments offered by rival carriers such as T-Mobile and Sprint to attract prospective customers.
For all the new customers who will be signing a 2-year agreement or those who renew their agreement after today, Verizon’s decision will have an impact as it is delaying the monthly ETF rebate and proration for customers under an agreement. The new terms of the agreement demand that the monthly ETF rebate will be applicable after eight months of service. According to the newly set terms, customers who decide to leave before 8 months into the stipulated agreement period will pay the standard $350 ETF. Also, these ETFs will now be prorated and discounted by $10 per month, which again will be applicable only during the 8-18th month of the agreement. During months 19–23, the ETF discount increases to $20 per month and goes up to $60 in the last month of the new 2-year contract.
As per the former ETF policy, customers who bought a smartphone under a 2-year agreement were subject to an ETF of $350. The fee was then prorated and reduced by $10 every month starting after the first month of the agreement. Customers who decided to pay the ETF after six months under the old policy would have been required to pay an ETF of $290, taking into account the monthly reduction totaling $60, instead of $350.
After the recent statements made by President Obama and FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler regarding the possibility of reclassifying broadband providers under the Title II regulations of the Communications Act for utilities, AT&T has settled to pause its planned rollout of its new U-Verse GigaPower fiber service until the expected argument regarding the issue is settled once and for all. CEO Randall Stephenson said that it is not feasible to make the move investing the amount of money it would take to deploy fiber to 100 cities while being still unaware of the rules under which those investments will be governed. Therefore, it is wiser to simply pause and take time to develop the insights and understanding about how those rules will be implemented and what their impact would be.
Reacting to the statements made by Obama and Wheeler on the Net neutrality push, AT&T threatened legal action if any attempt was made at Title II classification for broadband providers along with other carriers. Although this latest move by AT&T seems logical in the turn of events, it also throws some light on the psychology of the major carrier. AT&T is indeed feeling threatened by the statements made by Obama and Wheeler regarding the new push because being reclassified as a utility would mean that the company would no longer enjoy the advantages it currently does as a broadband provider.
Without the advantages in infrastructure control and local monopoly power that AT&T has been benefiting from all these years, it would be forced to compete against local competitors and resellers, much like its namesake predecessor did when the Bell System was broken up during the 1980’s, which lead to competition and growth in the telephone sector that drove down prices for local and long-distance calling.
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