Cell connections blasting past land lines
By Greg George
CEO
Spinal Cord Resources Network
Top Tech News has an interesting story about telephone use in the US. Up to this point more people used land lines rather then cell connections. All homes and businesses have been wired for telephone as well as Internet connectivity. Cell phones have been slowly eating away at the number of landlines that were asked for and now most people are going to cell exclusively. Telephone companies have priced themselves out of the land line business with unlimited calls and minutes to anyone in in the US and Canada. With landlines charging fees on top of per minute rates to local calls as well as long distance made it a no-brainer to switch. The switch became even easier when congress made it a law to transfer your telephone number when you moved services. Now you could shop for the best service that fit your needs and always can bring your telephone number with you. It became simple to give cell phones to the kids as well as employees to keep in touch. Now services like Vonage are even further cutting into normal landlines by allowing customers to use their existing Internet connection to make calls. This gave virtually all the same benefits of having a cell phone for home use. Fortunately telephone companies have been investing heavily in cellular and Internet services which has offset the loss of land line customers.
The biggest benefit is that you can carry your phone around anywhere allowing you to be connected at all times. Plus one phone number can do everything. It is now possible to get all your connectivity with one device that works everywhere. The rise of cell traffic has been evident in other less developed countries where it is far easier to build cell towers rather then wiring up every building. In Mexico it can take years to get a land line installed (but not hooked up to the local CU) where getting a cell phone connection takes only a few minutes. Both monetary reasons as well as customer service reasons mark the end of the land line. It is far cheaper to put up a tower to give service to an area that you know will be used rather then hooking up a land line to a pay phone that may never be used. Plus with landlines still charging per minute for services a customer can pay for a cell phone within a few months of purchasing it. Many young people are only purchasing a cell phone, they never get the land line hooked up in their apartment. It is nothing more then an added expense that is tied to the apartment.
With radio, television and Internet all coming together into a common media, it is obvious that the Internet will be the hub to get everything you want for communications. There will be no reason to drive down to the local movie rental company when you can instantly watch everything that you want on any television in the house. The same cable brings in the Internet connection and telephone service over the net (VoIP). ISPs will be the only players around to get the services you want for your house. It remains to be seen if telephone companies can keep their grip on the cell phone market. The telephone companies tried to use the same per minute business market for the Internet and it failed miserably. No one is going to pay per minute when you can talk forever for a small monthly fee. The advent of the newer smart phones (Blackberry and iPhone) you can have everything in the palm of your hand. It will be interesting to see what services are brought to the home and handheld as Internet speeds get ever faster.
