If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Dan York wrote an interesting post today where he points out why he chose NOT to cut the landline cord in his new home.

After reading that, I got back to four years ago when me and my wife decided, on the contrary, not to get it in our new home. Here are four reasons why we took that decision. Keep in mind that the story between me and Dan is very different, since I live in Italy and not in the US and the Telecom landscape here is much different. Anyway, I thought it could have been useful to share my story as well.

1) Communications are Personal

Who would benefit from calling my landline number at home? Weekend apart, during the weekdays me and my wife are rarely at home. Who wants to call me and always find me or my wife, call us at our mobile phone. This way people are pretty much sure to find us and to talk to the right person. I know that the story is a little bit different in the US. A few months ago I discussed about this subject with Stuart Henshall and he told me that US people still feel the necessity to have a family phone number. In Italy this is not true any more, since mobile operators are strongly bombarding families with attracting offerings in order for them to give up on PSTN and use their mobile phone only (and porting their landline number too!).

2) I don’t need a FAX machine at home

When I need it, I use the one located in my office. For personal usage, I have a virtual fax number when I can receive faxes and from which I can send faxes by just sending an email with a PDF attached. I don’t use it so often, but I can always use it when needed (and at a very low rate too).

3) I don’t want to pay any Telecom monthly fee

In Italy you just have to pay around 15 euros/month to the local incumbent just to cover the basic cost of the line. Then, on top of that, you can add plans, minutes and the DSL connection. This means that in one year you pay about 180 euros for… nothing. Since I don’t like it, I chose to get a naked DSL at home from another operator. I pay a little bit more than 15 euros per month but I get a 4Mbits ADSL at home without having to deal with the incumbent. For any call, I can use my mobile phone or VOIP from my laptop. No waste of money with this solution.

4) Disturbing calls

In Italy, intrusive advertising phone calls are rare on your mobile phone. On the contrary, you can receive up to 4-5 calls a day to your landline number, because your number is publicly listed on the local white pages and companies usually don’t care about the stringent privacy rules we have in Italy. This is, for example, one of the reasons why my parents (and many others) are thinking to cut the landline cord too, after 40 years of service.

All that said, ADSL is a must for me but I don’t want to pay more for a service that I can get thanks to other tools and services. Yes, there are many operators that let you have their own contract, sometimes reimbursing the fee you have to pay to the incumbent. In any case, at the end of the day, for me, it’s not worth it. 

Technorati Tags: dan york, landline, luca filigheddu, Mobile