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Comment by andrewaylett | Hacker News Reader

That really helps when it's the same number trying to call you again and again (and for the record, all of my Android phones have had the same feature). Unfortunately, here in the UK it's my landline that gets called (which doesn't have that feature) and almost always from a withheld or international number, which means I can't block just that caller anyway.

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I have the same issue, but on my mobile. Same message every time "We've been trying to contact you regarding mis-sold PPI.." but different number.

Originally it was from a range of UK mobile numbers, but now it seems to all be foreign numbers so I guess the mobile operators picked up on it. Not really anyway to block it, but at least when it's an unknown foreign number I can be reasonably sure it's a scam and just reject the call.

I kind of feel like saying "don't use landlines then dummy!" I mean it's a bit glib, but in all seriousness, why would you use landlines these days for telephone calls? Maybe it's different in the UK, but certainly here in France even the most basic phone plans come with pretty much unlimited domestic calls making the low-tech problems associated with landline phones just not worth the hassle anymore.

For a lot of subscribers in the US, telephone is bundled with cable TV and internet packages. trying to purchase one or the other or both without the all-in-one bundle is usually more expensive.

Also, at least in my market, I've been seeing a lot of scaremongering ads about how cell phones aren't reliable in an emergency and don't alert LE to your location immediately like dialing 911 from a landline does. It's ironic when these ads are placed by the cable companies which generally use digital telephone products that are susceptible to outages and don't work when the power is out, just like cable.

Even if you save money by accepting a landline as part of a bundle, doesn't mean you have to plug a phone into the socket.

That's true, but I think most people will feel obligated to since they're paying for it anyway, and landline phones are cheap.

You should check your cable bundle again. Chances are, they're charging you at least $20 for that digital 'landline' service you don't really use.

I'm also curious since I've never had a landline. Maybe we did at some point because it was bundled with other subscriptions, but never had anything plugged into it. I'd just use my cell phone for every single call I make anyway, so I don't really see the point of having one.

Landline calls are generally much cheaper, especially if you go via a rerouter such as 18866. My wife frequently makes hour-long international calls for 2p or 4p per minute when the Vodafone charge on "pay monthly" is £1.50 per minute.

On my UK mobile, it costs 10x more to call my son in the next room than to call the USA.

Of course, it all depends on the mobile deal you have, who you call, and where they live....

Voice quality on mobile phones is crap. I can't believe you haven't noticed. Landline to landline calls are crystal clear. On cellphone calls I find myself often having to ask people to repeat themselves. I think this is one of the big reasons people tend to prefer SMS to voice on mobile phones.

I haven't noticed, because I've only used a landline a couple of times, years ago. I'm not having trouble understanding people during cell phone-to-cell phone or VoiP calls either, and I'm probably in the minority with this, but I prefer calling to texting. I can understand that people want to keep their landline connection if it's that much cheaper for international calls for example, but it never really occurred to me get one.

1. Somewhat higher quality. 2. Different legal status (police calls etc.). 3. Powered from a separate "battery", often will work even nothing else does.

I'd like to ditch my landline, and my internet is over cable rather than the landline, so there should be no inconvenience. However the pricing system (UK, Virgin Media) means that Internet+phone is almost the same as just Internet :/

We had a landline in college for the longest time for DSL, but cellphones were already ubiquitous then - we just never bothered hooking up the phone to it.

We could still call out in case of emergency, but it freed us from receiving calls.

(On the other hand, given how many people here don't pick up unknown numbers, calling anyone except emergency services from a previously unused landline would be useless...)

I know what you mean. Every time I try to cancel my Virgin Media land line, they offer me phone + internet for cheaper than just internet. And then over the term of the contract, the price seems to gradually go up and up :-( Still the best and fastest internet though.

> why would you use landlines these days for telephone calls

Because in areas that have relatively frequent natural disasters land lines will be more reliable and repaired faster then cell service.

Then there is also the reason that I don't have cellular signal in my house without wifi.

> Because in areas that have relatively frequent natural disasters land lines will be more reliable and repaired faster then cell service.

Other than losing power for extended periods, thereby affecting charging capability, how is this true? It seems like miles of physical wires are going to be more difficult to fix than towers.

Depends on the severity of the problem. Cut lines are easy to fix as compared to rebuilding a tower that's been knocked down due to bad weather.

Am I the only one who prefers voice quality on a landline?

For conversations longer than 1 minute it's just much easier on the ears, in my opinion.

VoLTE (Voice over LTE) and WiFi calling both sound spectacular, but they're still in the process of being rolled out and require both parties to opt-in ahead of time.

Beyond voice quality, a POTS landline (at least in the US) will keep running even when the local power grid is down. Unfortunately, phone lines and power lines share utility poles, so if there's physical damage your phone service will also be interrupted.

Where I used to live, the POTS lines were on separate poles from the power lines in a lot of areas, and the phone lines were far and away more robust than the power lines. During the winter, snow would routinely take out the power in huge areas, sometimes for two weeks or longer, but you could still use the phone if you had a basic trimline model (which everybody kept one around for these situations) into the jack.

I seem to remember that you can hear your own voice on a landline, so you can more comfortably regulate the volume. Talking on a cellphone is just randomly speaking and hoping the other person hear it right. I think this led to a lot of the shouting on cellphones in in the street or on the train that people used to do. Uncomfortable I agree.

No, you're not. I do too. Also, whatever noise cancellation, sampling or jitter that cell phones have makes it so that people talk over each other a significant number of times. Landlines don't have that, and I suspect that the analog "last mile" is the reason.

because they are part of the tv / phone / internet bundle which is cheaper than just two parts of the bundle alone

In my area (north of SF), 911 calls from cellular phones get routed to a call center on the other side of the bay from me (if I recall right). This means that response time for 911 calls from a cellular phone are about 20 minutes, whereas response time for land-line 911 calls is about 5-10 minutes, because my local services can see from the land line my address, and dispatch someone Right Away.

Cardiac Arrest gets significantly more deadly after 7 minutes (I think?), and every second counts. A cellular phone is great in an emergency, but consider using a land line whenever possible.

I'm not sure about stock Android, but on Cyanogenmod you can block calls from unknown numbers (not present on your contact list) or even block using wildcards. Extremely useful feature for my spam phone.

What if a legitimate person, such as a friend, gets your number from someone else? What if you use that number for business (e.g. you're a freelancer), and you want to be able to receive calls from customers?

There's basically about a thousand scenarios where "block calls from unknown numbers" feature wouldn't work. I call it the "nuclear option" and just with nukes, the collateral damage just isn't worth it.

While immediately blocking all unknown numbers may well be excessive, I'd like a feature where all known good numbers (my "white list") go straight through, all known bad numbers (my "black list") don't even cause the phone to ring, and all other numbers go straight to voicemail. They'd be easy to review at my leisure for addition to my white or black list and the phone spammers would never again interrupt the peaceful enjoyment of my dinner.

I don't imply that this feature solves all the problems, but I know plenty of people (mostly attractive girls), that won't answer to unknown numbers on their personal phone anyway. Furthermore, there's log of blocked calls you can always check for repeated attemps and call back, or your hypothetical friend can send you sms to present himself.

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