home phone service vs. cell phone

[rollingmom]

First, I will say that I'm cell phone illiterate- so, I will not understand any of the initials - plain english, please.

Now the question- I live in LaPorte, IN and have Verizon as my local and long distance carrier on my home phone. I have no cell phone at this time. My average monthly phone bill is $70.00 (basic charges and a special plan for my "local" long distance.) Most of the calling I make is in Porter county - the next county over- where all of my family is from. I am wondering if I could get by cheaper by using a cell phone as my main phone and having a Chesterton or Valpo phone number (plus the security of having one) and just keeping my home phone for local calling and internet access. Is this feasible? Has anyone done this? What about minutes?

Could someone please walk me through this? I would really, really appreciate it!!!

Rollingmom[img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-blush.gif[/img]

[Buickman]

The biggest factor is the kind of rate plan you can get in your area. If you make alot of your long distance calls during free time like night and weekend hours (again dependant of the service plans in your area) than you can save a lot of money. You mentioned wanting to have a number from another town, you would have to check with the carrier, but usualy the number has to match the area of the billing adress on the account. There are alot of people who only have cell phone and not home lines, so it is possible, you will just have to see what is avalible in your area and see if it works for you.
Hope this helps.
Buickman

[Redmen34]

I'm sure everyone will love to help you out, but will need some more information from you. First thing is whether or not you will be using the phone to travel or just in your home area. This will determine whether you need a national or just a local plan. Local plans generally offer more minutes than national for the same cost. Secondly, how many minutes do you expect to use the phone for? If you just want it for the "local" long distance and long distance, probably just need to know how many long distance minutes you use. Also, do you have any preference in a cell phone carrier (i.e. Verizon, Cingular, T-Mobile, etc)? I'm sure there is more people will need to know so if you can think of anything along these lines let us know.

[VTEC01EX]

I use a cell phone as my only phone, and it's been GREAT. There's no more phone tag with answering machines and stuff, everyone has one number to get ahold of me wherever I am. I'm on a local plan for Ohio with Verizon, which is cool because i rarely leave the state. It's also dramatically cut down on the telemarketing I've recieved. I use cable for my internet access, so I haven't needed a land line for anything really. I make most of my calls during night hours, so it's really been helpful for me.

[Indianamonkeyboy]

I live over in Portage, IN so we are almost neighbors [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif[/img]

I have a similar situation. Most of my family live over in lake county, so I got a lake co. phone number for my cell phone to make it easier for family to get a hold of me. I also have verizon for local phone service, but I have Cingular for cell service (it's work's preferred carrier).

My wife and I save additional money since she convinced some of her friends to get Cingular and they all signed up to get 500 additional mobile to mobile minutes for only $4.99/month. I needed a national plan (no roaming at all) for work, so we don't save much by talking to each other on the phones. Cingular only offers Mobile to Mobile on local plans.

Check with some of the other carriers for this, it helps a lot. Currently the ones I know of the offer mobile to mobile are verizon, sprint and t-mobile. The advantage to these is that it's not just local, you can get national plans with this feature from these carriers.

Hope this helps

[pogo]

I have a cell phone for my main phone and do not have a home phone hooked up. It would cost me $30 per month just to have a local landline phone hooked up and all of my calls are long distance. I would recommend making sure that you have enough anytime and night/weekend minutes on your cell phone so that you can eliminate your landline phone completely, provided your clarity on your cell phone is good in your house. As for the internet, $30 landline + $20 internet service = $50/month for dial-up connection. You can get a cable/dsl connection (10x faster) for the same price.

[CDMA]

If you get a cell phone and you find it doesn't work well at your house, you usually have a certain amount of time "trial period" where you can return the phone and get your money back minus usage charges. I only use cell phones, cable internet, and alarm-net radio monitoring for my home security system. The best of all worlds.

[phonezone]

I just recently signed up with a company called Excel and they have a plan where you can call anywhere UNLIMITED in the U.S, Canada, Guam, Puerto Rico and all the Saipan, Marina Islands for only $49.99 per month. This is for real and it comes with 10 calling features. Your bill can not be higher than $49.99 unless you call outside of the areas that I listed. But from now on there is no reason to ever pay more than 50.00 bucks a month for your home service! Also you get to keep your phone number and there is no contract either. If you want more info on how to sign up just email me at phonezonellc@yahoo.com

[Badams1]

We (My wife and I) turned our land line off nearly a year ago. [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif[/img]

I definently prefer using cell phones only.