"Jim Thompson" wrote in
message ...
Seems like a smart way to go would be a system with a charger... drop
cell into it... cell is now connected to cordless sets in the house
via Dect 6.0 rather than Bluetooth.

Other than the charger portion of it, that's what the Panasonic system there
does... leave your cell phone (plugged into your regular charger, if you like)
within ~30' (the Bluetooth range) of the "base," and then use the
DECT-connected handsets around the house instead.

I'm pondering going this route... my 2-line land service now costs
more than 2 cell phone service with the same features :-(

I'd ditch the land line unlesss you still get a lot of FAXes...

We started running out of cell phone minutes not quite a year ago now after my
wife changed jobs (working from home), and we bought an Ooma system (uses your
Internet connection for calls -- we have this one:
http://www.amazon.com/ooma-Phone-Sys.../dp/B001C1MGKI ,
although there's now a newer model) that works quite well. Initially we just
used their "basic" services that are free, although she switched jobs again a
couple months ago and that new company reimburses her the $10/month for their
premium service that lets you do lots of fancy automatic call
routing/rejection, can be set to ring *multiple phone lines at the same time
(e.g., your cell and regular phone)* when someone dials your number, etc.
(Even with the basic services you already get web-accessible voicemail...)
It's really quite neat...

We have the Ooma base unit plugged into a cheap Panasonic DECT cordless phone.

One limitation is that sending and receiving FAXes is a bit dicey -- it
*usually* works, but since there's some fancy CODEC that compresses the audio
somewhat, occasionally the FAX machine ends up retrying several times before
it's successful. (Although before we had the Ooma we paid OneSuite.Com for
incoming FAX services... something like a month a month, I believe.)

---Joel