8 Reasons You Still Need a Home Phone
By Distributel
It’s 2020, who still needs a home phone? Lots of people, we’d argue. Even though most people have cell phones on them at all times, there are good reasons to keep a home phone, such as better voice quality, convenience, and safety. On top of that, a modern VoIP home phone system is inexpensive, easy to set up, and comes with even more features than an old-school landline.
Voice Quality
Cell phones are made to do dozens of things. Low bandwidth allocation and small receivers mean that voice quality over a cell phone suffers. On top of that you might have poor reception in some parts of your home.
Home phones are built for good voice reception. A home phone is nothing but a phone, so it does its job well. Combine that with the dependability and security of a wired connection, along with high internet bandwidth, and you have superior voice quality.
Access
Not all members of your household necessarily have phones. Children and the elderly frequently don’t, and they may need to make or receive calls too. There are also times when your cell phone is dead and you’d like to make a call or times when you have a guest who needs to make a call.
Two Number Convenience
You may not want to give your cell phone number out to every service you sign up for or business you order from. With a second number, you can make your home phone the default option for people, businesses, and services trying to reach you, and reserve your cell phone number for people who matter the most!
Convenience
With a wired home phone in multiple rooms, you don’t have to carry your cell phone with you at all times. When you hear a call, you can just pick up the nearest phone instead of going on an adventure to find your cell phone. You also rarely accidentally leave a home phone on mute.
Large Scale Disasters
When a large scale disaster hits and multiple people are tying up cell phone towers, cell phone towers get jammed. Or, depending on the disaster, they can go down. With a home phone system that by definition doesn’t rely on a cell tower, you may be able to get through where others can’t.
Lower Lag
When you’re speaking cell phone to cell phone and one or both have poor reception, you can end up talking over each other because of lag (i.e., latency). The data doesn’t transmit in real time, you think the other person is done, you start talking, but they’re still going, then you both stop . . .
Home phones don’t have this problem. When you have an internet connection with high bandwidth, your voice is transmitted instantly and you get a clearer conversation.
Long Distance
Cell phone plans can get really expensive when you add things like US or international calling. By contrast, home phone plans tend to have better, more inexpensive options for international calling. On top of that, clear voice and low latency are things that matter even more when making an international call.
Inexpensive
Cell phone plans can be very pricy, but most home phone plans cost around thirty to fifty bucks, even with a bunch of extra features like call waiting, voicemail, and call display.
Or even less with Distributel’s Digital Home Phone plan.
The Big Takeaway
It’s a world made for smartphones, there’s no denying that. But there are good reasons to still keep a home phone.