VoIP And Cell Phones Eroding Traditional Telecoms

Lullabye_Muse writes "Yahoo! reports that telecoms in Europe and U.S. are losing in response to people switching their home phones for cellphones and dial up to cable modems. More info on specific VoIP discussed in latter part of article. The trend seems to becoming widespread, I guess 10 years and all the old wires are gonna start to be taken down."

Comments

A land-line...?

[SIGALRM]

"We saw what would happen with Voice over Internet Protocol. Rather than allow it to happen to us, we decided to embrace the technology," a BT spokesman said.

Smart move. The discount carriers are going to ramp-up competition, and this can only be good for us, the good ol' consumer. One of these days, VoIP will come to mobile, and that will be another milestone; we'll see how the big carriers respond to that.

I still keep my land-line operational, though... I'm beginning to wonder why.

Re:A land-line...?

[jriskin]

900mhz is a pretty good spot for cordless. The higher frequencies tend to bounce around and get absorbed by walls and structures. People forget that bigger numbers aren't always better.

Personally I miss the days of 3-5watt analog cell phones. Range was about 10x what the little 800mW ones we carry around today. The networks are also about 10x more crowded. The reason they went to digital in the first place was just to get more people in the same amount of spectrum...

Re:A land-line...?

[rs79]

It's not just you. I've lost count of how many we've tried and I swear the less you pay the better they work. Sony seems to be the worst; I did a 9 month gig at Sony and everybody there told me to avoid sony phones like the plague.

$30 Unidens seem to work real well.

I *don't* have a landline phone anymore.

[soft_guy]

I just moved. When I was living in an area that was kind of far out of town, I did not have cell coverage at my house. Now, we just moved and we do. So, no landline phone! My wife and I just use our cell phones. Of course, we still have our old numbers which are in a different area code. That freaks people our when we order pizza.

We used to have cable modem and used 802.11b for the past few years. Now, we have a neighbor who has a wireless network called "Linksys" with no WEP key set. So, we don't pay for internet anymore either. I suppose the day they put a wep key on it or shut it down, I will order either cable or DSL (we actually can get either where we live.)

We still have to pay for our cell phones and for electricity, but we're saving like $200 a month without phone or broadband. (Math check: Our old cable company wouldn't sell us broadband without digitial cable and the total price was like $100 a month. Plus, phone bill including long distance since the cell phones wouldn't work from the house and all our relatives live in other states.)