When It Comes to Phone Service, Should You Pick Just One, or Both?

It may seem like the great telephone debate—mobile or home phone service?—has been settled ages ago. But the objective truth is, both types of phone service have their advantages and benefits, and both have their disadvantages too. The real question at the heart of this debate isn’t which one is better; the question is, which one is best for your lifestyle? Mobile, home phone, or both? Let’s take a look at each in turn:

Mobile Phones

Cellular phone service has improved greatly since it first gained popularity over 20 years ago, and the advancements in the hardware are equally impressive. Far from the old green-and-black display and the slim chance that you may be able to play Snake, today’s smartphones are veritable pocket computers that do everything you want them to—to the extent that their usability as a telephone is almost secondary. This functionality is even better at home with high-speed Wi-Fi. While mobile phones used to be notoriously unreliable, dropping calls and offering poor reception, modern networks have alieved these issues for the most part (though not eliminated them). If you live life on the go, a smartphone is an absolute must—but that doesn’t disqualify the landline just yet.

Home Phone Service

Let’s get the obvious out of the way right off the bat—no, you can’t take your landline phone on the go, you can’t text, and you can’t play Candy Crush. However, you now have a singular, centralized phone service in your household, which is especially useful for families. Now someone trying to contact your household no longer has to play phone tag, calling every number of every family member in desperation.
Speaking of family, if there is a person in your family that is hard of hearing, whether they live with you or you call them regularly, a home phone will provide crystal-clear sound quality on both ends when compared against mobile. This is doubly useful if you make a lot of business calls from a home office. The line is also more reliable—virtually no chance of a dropped call, and corded phones will continue to work in a power outage, long after batteries have died or cell towers have gone down. This can be incredibly important in emergency situations during blackouts.
When you call 911 on a mobile device, your GPS information is used to locate you—unless for any reason the signal is disrupted, such as by high buildings or radio interference. On a landline, your address appears immediately, even if you don’t have the opportunity to speak. If you live in a high-rise, where GPS sometimes falters, this difference could save a life.
Ultimately, mobile phone service is incredibly useful, but home phone service shouldn’t be regarded as extinct when it still offers a multitude of its own unique benefits. Consider a landline in your household, and see these benefits yourself.