It’s not surprising, but it’s interesting to see it backed up by a study: people are no longer bothering to sign up for a landline when they move out of home, preferring instead the greater flexibility of a mobile phone. According to research by the Australian Communications and Media Authority, there’s a clear pattern: older people stick to landlines, but younger people (especially those aged 24-35) are largely driven by mobile phone use. While I don’t fall into that age bracket, I must admit the only reason I haven’t got naked DSL at my place yet and dumped the landline is a combination of laziness and some problems with the DSL part of the equation. Have you dumped your landline — and did you get a barrage of relatives complaining you were too expensive to contact? Share your experiences in the comments. Pic by Holger.Ellgaard from Wikimedia Commons
Landlines Officially Going The Way Of The Dinosaur
Comments
14 responses to “Landlines Officially Going The Way Of The Dinosaur”
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JasonWe dumped the landline in favour of iiNet Naked DSL when we moved house. It’s really only there for our relatives to call us. Given the huge cap on my Virgin Mobile iPhone plan, I hardly use the VOIP line at all – we make all our international calls on my mobile for free.
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kymehraI recently moved house and decided to go with Naked DSL. After a few hiccups with getting it installed (the landlord hadn’t connected the phone in the last four years) the service went live and i haven’t looked back. I use iiNet which includes free local and national VOIP and my average phone bill including a few mobile calls is $3 or $4.
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michaelnaked dsl is incredible (if it works)… my goal in life is to not pay a cent to telstra and iinet have enabled me to do that by removing the need for line rental.
having said that i had a problem with the lead-in cable to our house for the first 18 months… internode would not organise it to be fixed (always had to speak to level 1 support who told me to clear my cache in IE… i dont even use IE) … iinet were much more proactive in organising telstra contractors (who were incredibly unreliable and most of them didn’t understand the concept of naked). iinet understood that i had debugged the problem and new that it was somewhere between the telstra pit and the phone socket
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WillemI pay for a landline connection, but haven’t had a a phone to plug in to the socket since we moved in a couple of years ago. The only reason I don’t go naked DSL is the deals are rather..umm.. uninspiring. Esp iinet and its counting of uploads to your quota.
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HimanshuI am not surprised by this stat at all.
I dumped my landline when IINet’s Naked DSL first surfaced. Its been an awesome experience. Naked DSL combined with their free VOIP service means I could even keep the landline number that I dumped (if I wanted to), and still reachable on a “landline” by others.
Not to mention the low-cost call charges, and I certainly don’t miss paying line rentals month after month!
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AntonYup, farewell Telstra.
btw does anyone else think the phone in the pic is uber-retro-cool?
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JasonQuestions:
1. has anyone experienced poor quality with Naked DSL calls?
2. anyone know of a good site that breaks down Naked DSL for beginners? Ie, what you need, how to set it up, etc?
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b8twoIt’s simple to see that a land line phone is not cost effective. $21 to $30 plus calls just to keep the service. You could have $29 Cap Mobile phone at home for that price and not have to pay for calls.
Naked ADSL line rental is approximately $10 but not charged from Telstra directly but it does make it more desirable then paying $11 to $20 more for a dial tone.
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Person11While naked DSL does sound attractive, I won’t be switching to a ‘naked’ service until ISP’s have decent troubleshooting methods available to them. Having worked with many, many Telstra techs on troubleshooting DSL problems, I find a common deciding factors of fault resolution is the quality of the voice service. Because a ULL is only a ‘voice grade’ service, Telstra techs can easily dismiss DSL connection/sync/attenuation issues by saying that your getting just that. DSL can work with only 1 wire attached, where voice requires the pair to both be in working order. This can be sorted out by re-logging a fault, your usually at tech no.2 before he will have a DSL modem, and be capable of breaking the network apart to spot progress the fault any further. For me as a consumer, as opposed to being a provider, I find that having an extra troubleshooting step also handy in identifying issues. Eg, Do I have dial tone? Is the tone noise? It also gives me crucial right to log faults and complaints directly with Telstra. Naked services rely on your provider logging faults on your behalf. Finally, your home phone number can sometimes be handy. When using automated services. I have nothing to prove or disprove this fact, but its worth having in a pinch. To anyone who believes that your cutting out Telstra from the prospect, your clearly miss informed about the ULL process. It is still Telstras copper between the DSLAM and your premise, and its still only Telstra techs that can work on this copper. Telstra are very much involved in the process, and a naked service is only preventing your interactions with them. In saying all that, I pay the $21 for a phone number and connectivity, and have never made a call on the line in the past 18 months, I don’t even own a phone to connect to the line.
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michael
@Jason
poor quality only if you have a crap connection, but with naked i get about 8Mbps, so you can be torrenting, playing FPS games and on the phone with no trouble -
MattWe recently moved from Syd to Melb. As a part of this move we replaced Telstra services with iiNet naked DSL + Voip.
I’ve found the cost reduction (from $350pcm to $120pcm) to be the most significant change. Unfortunately this is closely followed by the speed reduction. While both, the new and old service were ADSL 2+, the Telstra speeds were considerably faster.
Finally, I often get asked about the call quality with VoIP. Even internaltion calls have been crystal clear. We won’t be going back to land lines any time soon.
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avoidzI have a landline because it was part of a bundle with Telstra (cable was the only provider option in my area). I still like having a landline to make local calls, and especially for those on-hold calls. It’s handy for relatives to phone me, too.
So it *is* still useful, though I can see why people don’t want it (the $30 bucks a month for starters).
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MarkOne of the best things about my iiNet VOIP is that I’ve never had a telemarketer call it. That alone has made it worthwhile 🙂
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PGThose that have ditched their land line, what are they doing about Foxtel IQ and ordering Fox Box Office movies? My understanding was a land line was needed for this, and since you have IQ you cannot use the Foxtel Voice ordering service.
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