How Do Folks Get By Using Only A Mobile At Home With No Land line?

I know it is a generational thing but it bugs me that I just can't work out the logistics of how anybody could use their cell phone as their home phone and not have a land line of some sort? Whenever I hear that my brother's family, he has three kids, or anybody else has decided to ditch the land line and just use mobile phones I try to picture myself trying it and i just can't find a way to make it work. Some basic scenarios I get stuck on include:
 
You get a call from grandma on your phone and after talking for awhile she wants to say hi to some other family members. You are on the third floor and everyone else is on the first floor or in the basement. How do you transfer the call?
 
You get home and take your phone out of your pocket and set it on the desk because once you take your coat off there are no spare pockets to stick it in comfortably. (And because walking around with a cell phone inside your house would be stupid). you wander off to another room and the hone rings... how do you answer it? For that matter how do you even hear it?
 
You resign yourself to feeling stupid and walk around with your cell phone wherever you go in the house. As you move from room to room the signal varies wildly because cell signals don't really pass through lathe and plaster walls or chimneys very well so there are a lot of dead spots. If the phone rings do you have to drop what you are doing and get to a known "Good Signal Area" before you can answer the phone? Will the phone even ring if you are in the wrong spot when the call comes in?
 
I'm really having trouble picturing how using a cell phone as your only home phone is in any way practical yet folks do it all the time so how do they get around this stuff?

You walk downstairs, seems simple.  That and speakerphone use is a lot less worse than it has been in the past, so sharing a call across multiple extensions is less necessary than in the past.

You've hit the options pretty clearly, walk around with it or leave it somewhere central.

I've got mine tethered to a Panasonic cordless set using their link-to-cell feature.  It seems to work relatively well.  Sharing an active call is an added step (these are two-line handsets) involving pressing a different button than the usual Talk button.  I've not tried sharing an active cell call.  I have used the handsets to make an out-going cell call, which worked as expected.
 
The real disaster to avoid is putting the cell phone where you sleep.  Way too many people have let themselves become Pavlov's dog, reacting to every little bleep their phone makes.  Or wreck their sleep habits mindlessly browsing with a bright light in their face right before sleep.  Bad, bad plan.

At my age I just don't see myself running up and down multiple flights of stairs just to pass a phone around when a land line can simply be put on hold and an announcement made for another family member to pick up the phone. Everybody sharing a single handset seems like something you would see in an old 1930s movie!
 
As I mentioned there is no-place central where I would likely even hear it ring let alone be able to get to it in time to answer and the few times i have carried it around because I was doing something with the camera or setting up some automation gizmo it has been a real annoyance.
 
I was hoping there was some cool trick I was missing that somehow made a cell phone practical as a landline replacement in my house but unless I use a tethering device to effectively turn it into a land line then I might as well just stick with an actual land line. In fact I think the better way to save money is to stop having a fancy cell phone at all. Maybe I will buy a cheap "pay as you go" phone for each car and just leave them in the car all of the time. That way I will never forget to take it with me and will have it for emergencies or the rare case when I need to call someplace while I am out of the house (like for directions to get someplace). Dirt cheap cell phones in the car and dirt cheap land lines in the house with maybe Goggle Voice as a backup line should be more than enough.

upstatemike said:

...walking around with a cell phone inside your house would be stupid

Click to expand...

 
Hey, that hits pretty close to home!
 
Really, though, the difference is illustrated by the fact that you call it a "cell phone".  I hardly ever make or receive phone calls, anymore.  But I use my smartphone all the time.  Text messages, timers and reminders, check the weather forecast, Twitter or Instagram, email, play a game on the john, flashlight, etc, etc, etc.  It lives in my left front pants pocket from morning to night.
 
Craig

pvrfan said:

Hey, that hits pretty close to home!
 
Really, though, the difference is illustrated by the fact that you call it a "cell phone".  I hardly ever make or receive phone calls, anymore.  But I use my smartphone all the time.  Text messages, timers and reminders, check the weather forecast, Twitter or Instagram, email, play a game on the john, flashlight, etc, etc, etc.  It lives in my left front pants pocket from morning to night.
 
Craig

Click to expand...

Texting is like emails except people expect you to stop what you are doing and respond immediately right? That is never going to happen! Alexa takes care of timers and reminders so no need to duplicate that. Not sure what the point of Facetube, Twitter and such is... do you really think I want to see a picture of what you are eating for lunch or hear about the new trick your dog can do? I guess I could use it as a $700 flashlight but it really doesn't put out that much light so maybe not.

I dumped my home copper line for some $70 per month and went Ooma. For about $4 per month it includes all the possible features I could ever get on my copper line for over $100 per month.
 
Ooma is connected into my existing 10 unit wireless phone system and you wouldn't know what system you were using. I purchased my Ooma with the Bluetooth adapter, and my cell phones then automatically connect to the Ooma box when we are home. Now I have 10 wireless phones that I can answer our cell phone on, transfer calls, and use as an intercom also. Although….that is getting superceded by Alexa boxes now.
 
Works like a charm. Bell telephone cried like a baby when I quit them, and went all the way down to $14 per month, which only made me more angry.

LarrylLix said:

I dumped my home copper line for some $70 per month and went Ooma. For about $4 per month it includes all the possible features I could ever get on my copper line for over $100 per month.
 
Ooma is connected into my existing 10 unit wireless phone system and you wouldn't know what system you were using. I purchased my Ooma with the Bluetooth adapter, and my cell phones then automatically connect to the Ooma box when we are home. Now I have 10 wireless phones that I can answer our cell phone on, transfer calls, and use as an intercom also. Although….that is getting superceded by Alexa boxes now.
 
Works like a charm. Bell telephone cried like a baby when I quit them, and went all the way down to $14 per month, which only made me more angry.

Click to expand...

Good plan except I still need the copper line to provide the Internet access that Ooma requires. I could drop the copper line and get Internet from the cable company but that would not be any cheaper (or any faster where I live) so no point.

Here kept going with copper for a time then switched over to Ooma and using one cell SIM card on a combo modem.
 
The combo modem is used for failover internet and phone to primary ISP cable connection. 

All of the SIM cards have unlimited this and that.
 
I also utilize Google Voice.  That said all of the phone stuff is wired to a phone patch panel and goes to a multiple line Panasonic DECT system.
 
Wife / I are not tethered to cell phones here. 

My cousin claims to be using a cell setup for primary Internet including heavy Netflix streaming. I have not found where any provider offers a reasonably priced plan to do this so I'm going to have to get my cousin to give me more details. Committed to putting a PA system in the the show arena at her horse stables so will use that opportunity to find out how she has it set up.

upstatemike said:

My cousin claims to be using a cell setup for primary Internet including heavy Netflix streaming. I have not found where any provider offers a reasonably priced plan to do this so I'm going to have to get my cousin to give me more details. Committed to putting a PA system in the the show arena at her horse stables so will use that opportunity to find out how she has it set up.

Click to expand...

In Canada we typically pay through the nsose for data on a cell plan. However I find if you get a data only plan (no voice)  they are much cheaper for some reason.
 
Geezzzz, our copper pair Internet tops out about 10Mbps? while our cable Internet has limits around 450 Mbps, last I saw, and that changes every few months now. Fibre has never been available to residential but their fibre claims are actually fibre to the neighbourhood box and coax to your home from there. I guess the short run allows the extreme speeds. I live in the rural surrounded by farmland. My ISP is about 250km away. LOL
 
I have found these farmers are amazingly up on comm technology. It's their lifeline, I guess?

Speed is not your only factor, total traffic is the key.  Doesn't help to have really fast service if you burn through the data limits in mere days.

The streaming thing is the killer for going cell-only.  Nobody's cell service is capable of handling the load of a whole series of households all trying to use the local cell for streaming.  There's just not enough wireless RF spectrum available for it.  For rural, point-to-point has merit, but you're back to bandwidth caps.
 
TANSTAAFL apples.

upstatemike said:

Good plan except I still need the copper line to provide the Internet access that Ooma requires. I could drop the copper line and get Internet from the cable company but that would not be any cheaper (or any faster where I live) so no point.

Click to expand...

Yeah. I got thinking about that later, with your copper line Internet access. Unless you are getting at least about 5Gbps 5Mbps download and 2 Gbps 2 Mbps upload, VoIP is just a PITA and will likely crap out on you. If the speeds are just a cap behind a much faster system you should be OK as the max does not usually crap out.

upstatemike said:

Texting is like emails except people expect you to stop what you are doing and respond immediately right? That is never going to happen! Alexa takes care of timers and reminders so no need to duplicate that. Not sure what the point of Facetube, Twitter and such is... do you really think I want to see a picture of what you are eating for lunch or hear about the new trick your dog can do? I guess I could use it as a $700 flashlight but it really doesn't put out that much light so maybe not.

Click to expand...

 
OK, you've won me over.  Where do I sign up for the new Luddite movement?   ray:
 
Craig

LarrylLix said:

Yeah. I got thinking about that later, with your copper line Internet access. Unless you are getting at least about 5Gbps download and 2 Gbps upload, VoIP is just a PITA and will likely crap out on you. If the speeds are just a cap behind a much faster system you should be OK as the max does not usually crap out.

Click to expand...

What service do you have that provides those type of speeds??

Frunple said:

What service do you have that provides those type of speeds??

Click to expand...

Copper telephone lines in the rural max out fairly low unless you have fibre within 2km IIRC.
The cable TV coax lines, once you upgrade do not offer anything less than 30Gbps 30 Mbps and unlimited bandwidth now. I upgraded to get Netflix a few months back but had to agree I could never go back to a 150 GByte cap for $40 per month. Makes sense as they can now throw away all their metering and billing complexities. The no cap per month changes the way you think about data though. Alexa radio srations and unlimited streaming becomes an every day normality.
 
Haha. Looks like they're not even offering copper wire Internet service here anymore. They only offer mobile service for a lot more. Looks like 25Gbps 25 Mbps is the speed.
 
Attaching a screenshot failed as the size is not allowed here.