We finally did it. Disconnected the land line and went with just cellular.
My biggest fear was losing that single little cell phone and trying to keep track of it...because you may remember that I have a certain penchant for dropping said phone into the toilet.
And finding one of our regular handsets when we had a land line can be difficult enough, because those phones seem to walk off and hide themselves in the oddest little places.
Until we found a lovely little item called the Xlink-cell Bluetooth Gateway
. If you have a cell phone that has bluetooth capability, you are able to send and receive cell phone calls using your regular handsets at home.Are you following me?
When your cell phone rings, your home handset rings and you can answer it and make outgoing calls just like you do with a land line. We place our cell phone where it receives the best reception and have the Xlink
sitting right next to it. There are no cords to plug into your cell phone - it picks up the bluetooth and uses that.If you're wanting to know how it works? Splendid, I tell ya! We've been using it for a few weeks, but we mentioned it to my dad several months ago (knowing he would be a great guinea pig) and he hasn't had any problems with it - so we took the plunge too.
Pretty amazing and lovely if you ask me. We are saving money by not having our land line since our cell phone has long distance and everything all rolled into one. We also didn't want to lose our home phone number that we'd had for years and years, so we had our home phone number transferred over (ported) as our cell phone number. We purchased our Xlink-cell Bluetooth Gateway
from Amazon for about $100, but know that it will pay for itself in just a few months (depending on what your land line bill is).And on a side note, we are still able to use 911 with this too. Tried, tested and works thanks to a certain 4-year-old who shall remain nameless. But at least he knows how to dial 911.
Just wanted to pass along a little something that is Working for Me!
This looks like an interesting solution! We might have to try it.
ReplyDelete(P.S. I came from We are THAT Family, but the link took me to your post "What Do You Fill Moats With")
This is really cool, I didn't even know such a thing existed. I'm bad with cell phones too. In the last year I've put mine in the washing machine twice, lost it once and ran over it with my car (don't ask). I can definitely see how this would be useful.
ReplyDeleteThat won't help us where we are now, but when we move back to the lower 48 next year, this is something I would LOVE to do. I hate having a landline at all since there really is no need for it, but where I live cell phones don't always work.
ReplyDeleteI have been debating this same decision for a while now. Thanks for the tip-- this may be the very thing I need to make my move!
ReplyDeleteThat's a nice feature.
ReplyDeleteGreat idea!
We've been "landlineless" for the past couple of years ourselves. No more waiting for someone to get off the phone or taking messages. I wonder what happens when you have more than 1 cell phone in the house. Do you all have multiple lines using it or just one cell number?
ReplyDeleteGREAT IDEA! My sis and her hubs dropped their land line but saved their telephone number. Seems to work well for them.
ReplyDeletethis is freaking genius. i need to install bluetooth in my reading glasses!
ReplyDeleteThis is great. We're thinking of leaving land line, but our alarm system is tied to the land line.
ReplyDelete