Why I still have a land line

I cringe every time I pay my SBC phone bill. With every member of my family using a mobile phone, the land line is redundant. When the home phone rings during the day, it is almost certainly a telemarketer (whatever happened to the Do Not Call list, anyway?) or some scammer posing as a bill collector, trying to frighten me into paying a debt I never incurred. But I've held onto the line out of a vague fear that in a home emergency, mobile phones would not be good enough.

CNET News.com has a story which basically confirms my fears (uh, thanks).

It's very likely that when you call 911 from your cell phone in an emergency, the operator on the other end won't automatically know your location.

This is despite the fact that most U.S. mobile phone companies have met a Federal Communications Commission mandate to provide location information to 911 operators for millions of wireless subscribers. After years of work, the wireless phone industry is still a long way from full deployment of what is known as enhanced 911 service, or E911.

I still have a land line, mostly because I prefer DSL to Cable.

In a similar vein, we're remodelling the second floor of our house, and while everything's open I've wired all the bedrooms plus living room & kitchen for ethernet. Sensible or redundant in the Wi-Fi world in which we live?

Good point on the DSL, I hadn't considered that. I'm a DSL customer, but I have it on top of a home office landline paid for by MPR (I do Future Tense and wavLength from home). So I could still ditch my home land line and keep my DSL. I need a quality land line for recording radio interviews.

As far as ethernet wiring, I'd consider it good insurance against weak Wi-fi signals. I'd do it. I'd also run loudspeaker wire in every room, too.

I ditched the land line a couple years ago. I have stand-alone DSL. I got a USB device that let's me plug-in my old school phone into the computer and just use Skype. The phone rings when people call. Sure, every now and then something weird happens. But I'm betting that in the off chance I have an emergency at home where I or someone else will be unable to tell people where I'm is about as likely to happen as a lightening strike. In the meantime I've got more money for beer. :)