I've got a landline, but I never receive any exciting calls on it. This isn't because my social life is barren – seriously, my flat is like Notting Hill Carnival 365 days a year, with slightly fewer muggings – but because I don't really see the point of telling anyone the number. I've got a mobile phone in my pocket for 16 hours a day, so if someone wants to call me, they may as well use that. The only people who do call me on the landline are telemarketers and my mum, who are pretty similar in the way they try and get me to answer difficult questions.

And I don't use it for outgoing calls, either – mainly for the sake of convenience, because all the numbers I use are sitting in my mobile and only require me to scroll to the picture of someone's face and stab them in the nose with a grubby index finger in order to get put through. It's possible that I'm wasting money by not using a landline – BT certainly thought so in this utterly impartial survey – but the complexity of comparing landline rates (and their evening/weekend allowances and friends-family discounts) with mobile rates (free minutes, peak/off peak, home/away networks) just becomes impossible to do without a calculator, several months of previous bills, your own comprehensive call history for the month so far and a spreadsheet blu-tacked to the wall. ( Read more... )