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Making the right call for phone service

Lou Dolinar

July 20, 2008

Is it time to cut the cord? According to a new survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, upward of 20 percent of the population no longer has landlines and relies exclusively on cell phones. Phone companies, most recently Verizon, have begun creating money-saving packages that let you get your Internet service without a landline, something cable/Internet firms have offered for years.

Savings are variable, depending on what kind of bundles you buy, so be prepared for a lot of fine print. Still, it's encouraging when the phone company recognizes the demand for its main product is falling: For an additional $30 per month, Verizon Wireless' "Flex Double Play" lets you skip the landline and add DSL/Internet to many wireless plans (not coincidentally, perhaps, roughly what Cablevision has as an introductory rate for its basic, somewhat faster, Internet service). Until recently, unless you had a landline, you would have had to pay additional hefty fees for a "dry loop" over which DSL could run.

Old fogy Lou is sentimental about POTS (plain old telephone service) in a way that the younger crowd may not understand - yet. Just ask mom and dad about Hurricane Gloria. Back in 1985, when cell phones were a novelty, Gloria knocked out power to parts of Long Island for 11 days, affecting 600,000-plus households.

POTS is off the grid, and ignores power outages. Post-Gloria, I returned to my Fire Island apartment with no power and 3 feet of sand that waves had washed into the living room. The phone, however, had a dial tone and functioned perfectly. Cellular telephony, on the other hand, fades quickly in an outage because many cell sites depend on batteries for short-term backup. Internet telephony, meanwhile, presumes a functioning router and modem in your home, both of which need real electricity.

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It will be interesting if we get a reprise of Gloria. Most people younger than 30 will be unavailable for comment for 11 days. Me, I have a couple of big auxiliary battery packs to keep my hardware alive.

Disasters aside, the case for moving exclusively to a cell phone-Internet combo, whether with cable, DSL or the new FiOS, is compelling. I made the move about five years ago, but I cheated: I kept my old landline and opted for the cheapest no-frills service, then loaded up on minutes for my wife's, my daughter's and my own cell. The first plus was convenience: After years of screwing around with various two-line cordless systems, and missing messages on answering machines, I set the main landline call-forward to my cell phone. That way the dwindling number of people who don't know how to Google "Dolinar" still know where to find me. Simple. Done.

As for the second line, that was a money saver. I dumped it altogether and signed up for eFax, a free or fee service that gives you a phone number to which faxes can be sent, which in turn are forwarded to your e-mail account. In a pinch I can use my scanner to send a fax via the same service, though I've used it rarely in the past couple of years. I use the landline phone about once a month, usually to make the cell phone ring when I've misplaced it.

More recently, I got rid of phone service at my Bay Shore office and switched to Internet-only. Alas, that set up a situation where it is possible to be phoneless: the cell phone dies, I forget it at home or I leave it in the sport utility vehicle and Linda drives off with it.

The fix for that one was Skype, since I always have a computer with me. Skype lets you download free software to make free or cheap phone calls via the Internet and your computer. All you need is a headset with microphone. There are different pricing plans; you can call computer to computer for free to other Skype users (yeah!), or you can get an "Internet phone" with a regular number that works like a landline (yawn), or, and this was the bonanza for me, you can dial out of their network to a regular landline for a mere 2 cents a minute. No monthly fees, just prepay for 10 bucks of airtime. So when I lose my cell phone, I can ring it with my computer and figure out where I mislaid it. Talk about progress.

Skype also makes sense for someone like me who only occasionally needs a two-line phone system. Sometimes I make a flurry of phone calls for interviews, and when that happens I miss my old two-line setup: I used one line for outgoing calls, another for incoming, thus pretty much eliminating phone tag. Well, since I have Skype, I use it for outgoing calls and the cell phone for incoming. There are lots of good deals in Internet telephony for volume users who want to replace the phone company's phone, but the a la carte nature of Skype is what's intriguing to me.

Incidentally, if you've cut the cord yourself, and have any thoughts you want to share with Newsday readers, drop us a note.