It’s a tough call to make...

IT would have been eccentric 10 years ago, but we are considering giving up our landline telephone.

When it rings, it’s like Alfred Hitchcock’s film Dial ‘M’ for Murder.

We dust off the handset with trembling fingers, and gather around it, muttering nervously about who could possibly be igniting the dino-phone. Eircom cannot provide us with broadband to bundle into the landline, as we are a tantalising 300m from the connection point, so what are we paying for? According to my last bill, €8.07 in call charges for two months, and a total, including package charges and calls, after VAT, of €93.27. It seems rude to stop this passive financial conduit to Eircom, but I think it’s time to hang up for good.

Cutting the cord feels like a big step. Eircom agents won’t shin up the poles by night and snip the lines connecting us to the domestic grid — but it’s a progressive decision.

The home phone was a shared, communal switchboard before we greedily pocketed our own mobile phones. My home phone is the number I give my outer circle and, frankly, I am not always available on that number and I cannot be texted on it.

There’s an intimacy to handing over a mobile number — the phone is on your person wherever you are, and even if you ignore the calls they are logged and you are open to texts night and day. The home phone has its place. It’s a polite gate-keeper, and often with a messaging service to further discreetly edit nuisance calls. However, there is another way.

Quite apart from an extra mobile with a docking station, there’s a phone that looks and behaves just like a landline. In fashionable, technophile circles it’s known as a Premicell, or, more chunkily, a fixed cellular terminal (FCT).

Detailed to look like a house phone, it offers some, but not all, of the features of a lower level mobile and, once fitted with a SIM, carries its own mobile number — in this instance, a new ‘house’ number. You could get a third, bog-standard mobile phone, load it with credit and leave it at the house. That is the solution used by many businesses, which have a quiver of phones in their commercial service package.

I put this challenge to the cancellation department at Eircom, stating my case, and the agent fought gamely for my loyalty. “How much would it cost to add this other phone? Have you checked? I can offer you our new package at €25 a month for six months, with all day calling nationally, internationally, and with 30 minutes of calls to mobiles,” she said.

The agent entreated for five minutes, waving the Orange spherical flag bravely in a stiffening breeze. “Why didn’t you offer that new package to me when it became available? Why am I on the old package at all,” I asked, flatly. She spluttered and apologised.

Frankly, I don’t open the bills frequently enough to know if the offer may have hit the mat, as we pay by direct debit.

“Well,” she went on brightly, “while you’re thinking things over (clever woman, I was momentarily stalled), I’ll apply our new deal to your account immediately.”

According to the Eurobarometer data that measures the market waters throughout our member states, three in ten households in Europe have no landline connection, and in countries like Czech Republic this rises to 75%.

The Economist magazine forecasted in 2009 that the last landline would be severed in 2025. Whether or not you need a landline, and whether or not they survive, mine is a cautionary tale.

Read those bills every month, especially those deftly handled by a direct debit and likely to slip by unnoticed.

There may be better deals on the product, or, as in my case, the advantages, with our evolving technologies and changing behaviours, may not outweigh the cost. Will I snip the line? Let me call you back.