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Comment by ericzawo | Hacker News Reader

I'm living with my parents for now and got them to cut out their cable television package after introducing them to the Wonderful World of Netflix. But I've found it much, much harder to get them off the home telephone (which here in Canada costs them $40/month!!) and it's 90% telemarketers, usually calling right around dinnertime. I'm planning to note everytime they call and the frequency with which it's a legitimate call on a spreadsheet planned over 30 days but I still haven't gotten around to it. Despite being fairly 'with-it' people (they both have their own smartphones, have a Sonos speaker system and ipads for crying out loud) they refuse to get rid of the home phone. Guess old habits...

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It's not just old habits -- there is the issue of the quality of the phone call. It's been my experience that cell phones mostly suck w/r/t phone call quality. Android or Apple, cheap burner flipphones or high-end igadgets... doesn't really seem to matter. From the poor speaker tone (tinny and/or lack of volume), to the digital compression artifacts (yeah yeah, I know it's the fault of the carrier), and the lag time which simulates an intercontinental analog phone call from the 1970s, a home phone is often a superior experience when it comes to simply talking.

It's the reason I keep a phone hanging on the wall.

I got rid of my land-line. Now I just get spammed on my cell. Can't win.

I'm in the US. We have a do-not-call registry. Spammers don't seem to care and hide their numbers, so I can't report them.

I know this is a bit in the weeds, but I recently got an LG V10 on T-Mobile, and there is an option in the Calls menu that allows me to "Reject calls from all private numbers". I can also add numbers to a call reject list, as well. My previous HTC One M8 had the reject by number (but not for private numbers), as well.

My dad has a V10 on Verizon and they don't have the reject private calls option--so it would appear that some carriers are removing functionality that is otherwise available on at least some phones. Figured I'd share because I had before assumed it was a technical problem to block the private numbers, and have been happily surprised now that I don't get calls from "Unknown" anymore.

Interesting. I'll have to look into that feature. Of course, I'm on Verizon, so I'm not hopeful.

Frankly, I wish "private" numbers were banned outright. I can't think of a good reason for allowing them.

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