by newsworthy

Created on: August 08, 2008   Last Updated: August 15, 2009

Five years ago while living in a downtown apartment building, the property manager said, "there are only two units in this entire building, that I know of, that are connected to landline phones". And he would have known since he was the person in charge of accessing the phone panel. During this time, I still used dial up Internet and didn't own a cell phone. Thus, out of the only two landlines installed, one was in my apartment.

Nevertheless, the strategy to give up landlines stretched long before 2003. Thinking back, I remember a call I had made to my aunt who lived seven hundred miles away. I called her from my PC, somewhere around the year 2000. Despite the fact that the call was occupied with noise and I was yelling into the microphone, repeating myself; I felt like I was connected; not to mention, thinking I was the coolest person in the house. I was making a long distance call for free!

Yelling to my aunt, I said "I'm calling you from my computer. Can you hear me?" To which she replied "What? I can't hear you!" I said, "Aunt Wanda, it's Yvonne and I'm using the computer to call you. Can you hear me? I'm trying to see how this works." But it was a short-lived dream at the time and the call didn't last long because Aunt Wanda couldn't decipher my words. We found out that each other was alive and doing ok, and that was it.

If wearing a headset isn't enough hassle-nothing is more frustrating then noise on a phone line. Although I don't remember exactly the program I was using that day, I decided then, that Internet phone was not for me. And although there were several other interfaces out there that I could try with my PC, I was simply not interested anymore. It was still clear to me, that the faithful clarity of a landline was my best choice for making calls.

That was then, this is now. Internet phone has since made a big hit with millions of customers the past few years-called Voice over Internet Protocol. From what I hear, it is a consistent signal with few problems that uses several pieces of equipment: as opposed to a simple standard analog phone. It is another reason to give up a landline, in addition to cell phones.

You may say that a non-working PC-to-phone interface in the year 2000 and dial up Internet is old news. Even so, with all the hassle of keeping up with extra equipment, cell phone minutes, dropped calls, roaming charges, keeping constant connectivity, or power failures; a landline phone is still the simplest form of using the phone.

It's true that time changes everything. I've since moved from the apartment where I lived five years ago and I bought a home. And I'm still a single girl on a budget, just as I was five years ago. Today, however, I have a cell phone because the company I work for wants me to use it. I have high speed Internet because my work demands it. But, when the lights go out because the electric company fails and there is no connectivity because my batteries charge is drained-I'll still have a landline to make calls.

This way, I wont have to rely on components, power failures or servers to make a call. It will take a strong gust of nature to keep me from making a phone call.

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