Hacker News Reader

Comment by Shengbo | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com