When you hear people talk about phones, sometimes you’ll hear them use the terms ‘cell phone’ and ‘landline.’ But what are they, and how do they differ?
A landline is a telephone that is connected via copper cables using the traditional telephone system. The phone number is associated with a physical address. A cell phone is a wireless phone utilizing a wireless signal from cell towers that are part of the cellular network. It’s completely mobile.
A variant of the landline is available today in the form of a VOIP or Voice Over IP phone. It connects via a copper cable, but it connects to the internet, not to a telephone system. In addition, it isn’t associated with a physical address, so if you call 911 from a VOIP phone, emergency services need to be told what your address is.
How do cell phones and traditional land lines differ?
Mobility
Probably the starkest difference between these two phone services is that landlines are connected to the wall by a cable, making them stationary. Of course, you can get a cordless handset, but a weaker signal will limit the range to a short distance from the base.
A cell phone is entirely mobile within the service area of your cell phone provider. Today, these service areas are large geographical regions covered by a network of towers your phone can transition.
Communications options
A landline comes with general voice communications, a voice mail service, and possibly caller-ID. However, for calls outside your local region, additional charges often apply. This is in contrast to a cell phone that can do all of the same with the addition of SMS or short messaging service text messages and data.
Power outage operation
Landlines traditionally can work during a power outage. In some regions, service providers may not maintain this feature, but one of the strengths of the landline system is that the phones are powered from the cable connection. Therefore, if you have a wireless handset, it won’t work during a power outage. However, any directly connected phone is capable of doing so.
Cell phones are limited by their battery capacity. During a power outage, you won’t be able to recharge it unless you have a generator or can run a vehicle to charge it. In addition, the numerous cell towers may or may not have batteries to maintain connectivity. Even if they do, their battery life may be on the low side and will need the power restored to charge.
Travel
A clear advantage of cell phones is that you can take them with you when you travel around the country or visit other countries. In addition, most modern cell phones allow you to change the SIM card when you travel, making it easy and inexpensive to get a local number with reasonable rates.
Emergency services
Landlines are associated with an address. That means, if you can emergency services from your landline, they know where you are. In many instances, people have called emergency services from their landline but were unable to speak. However, emergency services could still come and assist the caller because of the associated home address.
If you have to call emergency services from a cell phone, you must tell them where you are. Since your phone is entirely mobile, you could be anywhere.
Additional features
Both types of phones can have contact lists, frequently used numbers, or an answering service. However, modern cell phones are tiny computers and have a far greater capacity to provide these features. For example, landline phones usually have a limit to how many numbers you store, whereas cell phones are only limited by their onboard memory.
Cost
The cost of a landline, when compared to the price of a cell phone, is usually a tale of two different animals. Landlines are traditionally a straightforward service, so the billing is transparent. You have a basic monthly subscription with a few features you can add on and additional charges for long-distance calls.
The subscription cost of a cell phone can vary greatly depending on the usage you set up in your plan. Certain combinations are allowable, whereas others are not. Promotional offers further complicate the process.
The pay as you go option means you can pay once, and then if you don’t use it very much, little to nothing month to month as long as your usage hasn’t expired. So for a lot of folks with good WIFI access, this is the way to go.
The handsets are dramatically different in price. For a standard landline handset, you can find something for $30 to $50 bucks. You can even get a wireless unit with two handsets for under $100. However, cell phones can be anywhere from a few hundred dollars to over $1000 for a new phone.
How do traditional landlines and VOIP phones differ?
Around 10 or 20 years ago, from the time of this writing, a new version of landline became available, known as VOIP. VOIP stands for Voice Over Internet Protocol which is essentially phone service over the internet rather than over dedicated copper telephone lines.
It was and is touted by the telephone companies as equivalent to a landline, but it has some crucial differences.
A VOIP phone isn’t associated with an address. So much like a cell phone, if you call emergency services, you must tell them your location. When they first rolled out, there was a lot of controversy over this fact because emergency services couldn’t respond to calls in the same manner as before.
Nonetheless, telephone companies love VOIP-enabled phones because they are easier and cheaper for them to administer. Plus, it gives them more flexibility to manage your account.
As a result, VOIP has been rebranded. If you ask your telephone company if the phone they’re offering is a VOIP phone, they will most likely say no, even if it is. To get around this, they’ve rebranded VOIP to be something else. Anything else. So how do you find out if that’s what you’re getting?
Ask them if this phone uses IP telephony to connect back to their system. If they say yes, it’s VOIP, even if they swear up and down that it isn’t. To avoid the controversy, they likely have some gimmicky name for it that is as far from VOIP as possible.
Additionally, the internet typically doesn’t work in a power outage, nor will your VOIP phone. That’s is because all of them need to be plugged in to work. In addition, they need your modem to have electricity to communicate outside of your home.
Even if you have a generator, it’s unlikely that your service provider is keeping the other components in its data network operating during a power outage.
Other than these two significant distinctions, landlines and VOIP phones are very similar in how you use them. An exception is, a VOIP phone can access data, meaning it can be offered with additional data features, but what is provided is determined by your service provider.
When it comes down to it, most people who need a regular home phone are fine with the traditional landline and benefit from its ability to cope with power outages. However, having better service from emergency services is also a big win for the landline user.