Like many families, we ditched our traditional some telephone service (what the industry calls "POTS" - Plain Old Telephone Service) awhile ago in favor of wireless (cell) phones. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control took a survey earlier this year and concluded that about 35% of American homes only use cell phones, a number that's expected to keep increasing.
→ See also - Choosing Broadband Phone Service
POTS was the original purpose of the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) but even if people don't want to plug wired telephones into it anymore, this network will still be heavily utilized for other more modern services like DSL and VoIP.
→ More - Over Half of American Homes Don't Have or Use Their Landline (gigaom.com)→ See also - Choosing Broadband Phone Service
I ditched BellSouth (now AT&T, if this indicates how long ago the move was) and have been exclusively a cellular service user for a few years. I have seen nothing from the landline companies to make me consider a move back to landline phone service. My conservative use of my cell phone is even cheaper than landline cost.
We’re thinking of ditching cable (spotty service here bandwidth capped) in favor of DSL, but competition among local companies has hindered the decision. oy. It’s still better than what we had in 1996: Dial-up on a party line while the telco was laying fiber to our front door. Fiber is still not an option here due to the location, DSL is still looking good…
My family went to cell phones only about 2 years ago. We discovered that overseas calls to Japan at $11 per minute were actually cheaper than a land line and the call quality was jsut as good. It thus no longer made sense to have a land line who only solicitors called anyway.
I would NEVER give up my home phone. Cell phones are spotty and when people call me on them I miss part of the conversation because they keep cutting out.