I'm a one-man driver training business, communicating with clients is very important for my survival.
I mainly communicate by SMS text with my thumb-happy teenaged clients, by email and by mobile/cell phone calls.

I have a land-line phone with an answering machine but I find I never use it to make calls not even in the evening when I'm home (except for once when my Blackberry played up), and I rarely get messages on it.
I also find I've never had a reason to send a fax either, I usually send documents & images via email as attachments or embedded.

So I'm wondering just how many modern business actually use fax (I presume office-based business would still use land-lines in a big way).
I'm thinking of ditching my landline and relying on mobilel phone & email only.

My brother does just that, both for his company and privately. He has never missed the extra phone bill that comes with the landline phone.

I would have liked to do the same, but my mobile connection is so poor where I live, so that won't be possible. But having an IP 'landline' phone makes it cheap anyway. I can call all countries in Europe for free, and also a great many countries overseas, like the US, Canada, Australia...

The broker that ships all of are plant material still relies on the fax machine to do business. They recieve their orders by fax from sales reps then make alterations and then fax the order to us. We can't wait for them to go digital and were already prepared for when they do. I have are end covered by custom Excel VB functions. I just need are broker to comply.

Eric... ehmm... it's said that the mind is flying faster than the fingers are able to type, I was able to understand what you mean - after having read your post twice or so...

I'm sorry. I wasn't fully awake yet. I got a call from the greenhouse alarm at 2:00 am and was down at the greenhouse for 2 1/2 hours trying to get are boiler running. It was coldest night of the winter so far.

-7 F

I've used a cell phone for my home/business for over 2 years now. I haven't looked back even once, don't miss the land line at all. Don't ever need an answering machine again since they almost all come with voicemail now. Not much use for a landline these days. There are also a few fax sites out there that can be utilized for those infrequent faxes you might need, yet most things can be done via email these days too since you can usually scan your material and send that way too. Just depends on the people on the other end and what they want also. Lots of ways around not having a land line

I would love to get rid of my $109 a month land line in favor of my $3.33 per month cell phone bill, but I can't.

My 76 year-old mother lives with me and she is handicapped. There is no way she could hold on to a tinny cell phone. Also, my land line is my internet connection. I would have to find another solution for that. As for the fax attached to that land line, I use that a lot when I order greenhouse supplies. My supplier depends on the fax and I kind of like it too. I just make several copies of their order form out of their catalog and fill one in by hand with the items I want and fax it in. It is faster than any method I can think of.

How is my cell phone that cheap you ask?? I have Page Plus which is part of Verizon. It is a pay-as-you-go type of thing. I call in once a quarter and buy $10 worth of minutes. True, I don't have all the fancy stuff an iphone has, but who needs that, I have an ipad, an ipod, 2 laptops and a desktop computer. The last thing I need is a phone that is smarter than I am

We checked into ditching our land-line, but the new plan without it was more expensive , about $40 per month over what we pay now. So those phones can sit there and collect dust as long as they want!

Does anyone else here remember when you had to "lease" your phone from the TelCo? Or when you had to pay extra for TouchTone service? Funny story, my parents didn't want to pay for TT so for years we still had standard rotary phones. Can't remember what prompted things but, for some reason they had to call the phone co to have our line checked. The technician came out and did his thing, during his service call, he activated TT to make his job easier (?). My Mom figured this out the next day or so by accident, called the TelCo to have it switched back to rotary, and was told that if they did, she would be charged $1.99/mo. ????? Couldn't believe it! Charge a customer for OLD TECHNOLOGY? I bout laughed my butt off over that one

lol Phil, yes I remember those days for sure!

Steven, maybe look into something like Vonage for having the land line? That way you pay I believe $25 a month for everything included.

I'm on DSL which goes through my phone company even though I don't have a land line at all. I don't pay extra for a line to have my computer on, they just set it up that way for computer use only. Maybe check into that if your internet is part of your phone setup or visa versa.