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Landline Holders Increasingly Older, More Affluent
netbuzz writes "More than a quarter of the under-30 crowd has decided you only need one telephone — and it sure as heck does not plug into a wall. The trend towards an all-mobile lifestyle is accelerating, according to a new survey. Besides younger people, lower-income people are also more likely to have cut the cord. And while businesses may be a bit slower on the cell-only uptake, there appears to be little doubt at this point that the traditional landline will be joining rotary dials and party lines as a relic of the telecommunications industry."
Hmm... the article mentioned businesses switching exclusively to mobile services.
:-)
It would be interesting if a wireless carrier introduced PBX-esque switching and operation. If service is good enough (a factor I'd assume holds most people back from ditching the land line), I'm sure a lot of small businesses would forgo a PBX-based telephone for a more easily set-up wireless based system.
I'd certainly get a cell phone with blinky lights that indicate a call coming through on line three!
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That's fine if that's what you value. Me, after many stubborn years, I've learned the fine art of the two hour phone call. And that takes a quality phone line where you can hear the other party breathe. Otherwise, it's just multitasking distractions. Yuck. I do too much of that at work to want to run my personal life that way.
"More than a quarter of the under-30 crowd has decided you only need one telephone -- and it sure as heck does not plug into a wall.
I'm in that category - I own a mobile, but unfortunately, here in Australia, you need to rent a landline from the monopoly PSTN provider (Telstra) if you want to have broadband internet (ADSL anyway).
So I have a landline I never use.
God they're filthy (Telstra) - hopefully we'll have a change of Government soon & get rid of the current spineless Prime Minister John Howard - who can't stand up to Telstra.
Correct me if I'm wrong. If phone lines aren't hampered with having to carry voice communications, will DSL be able to grab more bandwidth?
I probably would have cut the cord a long time ago, but every time I start looking at cell phone plans, I just get mad. Especially with the various taxes that are always listed separately. Look, I don't care if you have to pay this tax, that fee, your company's hydro bill or for your CEO's lunches, just tell me what the bloody thing costs.
:p)
Besides, don't DSL companies still charge you the $10 or so for a landline?
Anyone care to suggest a cell phone provider in Toronto that won't get my blood pressure up (too much?
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OK, I admit that I never caught the cell phone bug. I have one, but it's provided by work, so what model I have is their choice. I got one for my wife for emergencies and occasional use, and we talk with each other on it, but that's about all.
So how do you handle extensions? You know, someone calls you, and you want to say, "Honey, pick up an extension." so you can talk together. Do you just 3-way the call?
And how do you handle guests? Do you simply assume that if they want to make a call, they just use their own cell phone?
I certainly have nothing against cell phones, I jut never really felt a pressing need.
Oh, and how do you handle devices that need to "dial home" periodically? (ReplayTV box, DirecTV box, etc.)
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
I converted to cell-only not because I'm always on the go or because of any cachet, but to avoid the constant barrage of telemarketer and solicitation calls I received at my land line. Getting on the "do not call" list was only marginally successful; most of the telemarketers who kept calling claimed they were exempt for some reason or another. It was a constant annoyance, and still the #1 reason I refuse to get a land line again.
If we do go all-cellular, I wonder if the legislation about telemarketers being unable to call cell phones would change. I'm praying it won't -- I've been enjoying the peace and quiet, quite frankly.
Paul McNamara, I suggest you get a different job. I suppose you were paid for the nonsense you wrote.
Cell phones are nowhere near as reliable as land lines, and all VOIP phones are worse. Not only that, but cell phone providers and VOIP providers save money by being unreliable, and there is no evidence that they plan to change their behavior.
I think you know this. That makes your lies fraud, in my opinion.
I guess your handlers call themselves NetBuzz because they think they are good at advertising. But they aren't. They and you are just liars, in my opinion.
Everyone who needs reliable telephone service has land lines, and there is no evidence that will change in the near future.
Anyhow, we don't want your kind corrupting our discussions of technology on Slashdot. Stay away.
I'm just barely under 30 (I'll be turning 29 in a couple months), and I've been landline-free since shortly after purchasing a home in 2003. I found that the extra ~$25/mo for a landline was completely wasted since I
- Never used it
- Didn't need it for DSL or Tivo
- Rarely made any phone calls while at home
- The only people calling me on it were phone spam for charities and crap
For me, it made financial sense to save the extra $25/mo I was paying for basic service. My cell works just about everywhere, including Canada (though I have to roam, which I'm fine with as I rarely go to Canada), I always have it on me, and the $40/mo plan I'm on gives me 1000 minutes a month with free, unlimited nights and weekends. However, I'm also an anomoly in terms of phone usage for my age group. I spend an average of < 30 minutes a month on the phone, as most of my calls generally sound something like, "Hey it's me. Yeah, I'll see you in a few minutes." I upgraded to a RAZR last fall, but otherwise I keep my phones for several years. I've been month-to-month on my current plan since 2002 when my initial contract expired, and I'd rather pay for my own phone than re-up a contract to get a "free" phone.Personally, I couldn't go back to using a landline. It's a useless technology for me, and as long as I have cell coverage I'm happy.
A single telephone line that serves more than one customer. Most often used in rural areas where it's not economical to install multiple lines. Privacy is nonexistent and I'd assume congestion is high.
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Party lines died out in the 60s, I believe. Back in the day, it was easier for the phone company to run a single pair through an entire block of houses. So if you had a party line, it basically meant that you and your neighbors shared extensions. Everyone had their own telephone number, and the phones would ring differently based on which number was dialed.
Needless to say this meant that every time you wanted to place a call, you'd risk interrupting your neighbors' conversations. It was cheaper to hook residential phones up this way, but obviously most people preferred to pay a bit more for their own line.
Its nothing to do with susceptability to advertising... the fact that its lower income, and under 30 makes perfect sense.
Everybody likes the convenience of a cellphone... the younger you are the more conversant with technology you are, so you are more likely to have one. If you only have one phone - older people will have landlines, younger people will have cellphones. Just as in 1990 younger people embraced computer word processors while many older people still used typewriters.
No surprise there.
As for landlines being skewed against low-income its simple. If you can only afford one phone (or only wish to afford one phone) the mobile is infinitely more flexible. If I had to choose between cutting my landline (ok ok voip line) or cellular bill, it would be a no brainer - the landline would go.
So no surprise there either.
In my case the only reason I have even a voip line in addition to a cell is I run a small business and wanted an 'office line'. The voip bundles free N.A. long distance, good intl rates, caller id, voicemail, and some pretty decent call management features all for a price less than what I used to pay for landline.
That is sensationalist crap, the thing about landlines being obselete. Maybe young students or people with apartments, but come on. There are huge advantages to a landline. It's more reliable and jamproof, and if you want an extra phone you pay $10 at the grocery store instead of hundreds (and repeating that every few years as they get obsolete). The voice quality is better and it doesn't run on freaking batteries. It's on the wall so you always know where it is and you don't lose it in the couch cushions. I can't imagine having a house without phones on the walls. What the hell do you do if you have kids and you have to hire a babysitter? Leave her your cellphone? Then what do you call home with? You can call her cellphone from yours but then there's still no number for the household, say if the neighbors want to tell you there's a fire next door or a prowler. And so on.
We can do both already. It's just a matter of keeping the airspace clean enough for the radio waves to travel.
And THAT is why it will be a while before businesses get rid of their lines. You want the cleanest voice connections you can get. Yo don nt c st m rs o ha e t dea ith al s re ki g p.
I ca 't wa t f r th en ire worl to be o c ll lar te eph nes. he ell lar s rvic an ca l q ali y ha gr dual y g tte wor e to th po nt t at m st of the ente ce ust e gu ssed ro c ntext.
I look forward to guessing the meaning of all my calls in the future
Dekker Dreyer
We thought the same thing until we had two periods this year with no cell service for a minimum of three days each. One was due to storms and flooding, the other was due to wind storms. Because we live a bit outside of our metro area, we were among the last to have cell service restored. We had relatives that had no way of contacting us to see if we were OK. No cell, no cable modem, no dial up because we didn't have a landline. Landlines were still working BTW, this was verified by a few people in town we talked to later on. So now, we pay $16.00/month for a landline, if only for the added security of being able to call 911 if we need to, and to be able to let our family know everything is OK. Landlines still have a place in this world, sometimes it takes an emergency to remember what that is.
How about the slow adoption rate being because many businesses have their own PBXs and want to control their voice mail? For many companies, switching to wireless phones simply isn't a viable solution and probably won't be for a long time. Sure, they're more reliable than they used to be, but they're still not as reliable as POTS. Keeping track mobile phones may also be difficult. Example: My mom's work phone still had service over 6 months after she quit her job.
Additionally, many companies would probably be reluctant to outsource their voicemail for security and confidentiality purposes. Besides, do you really want to answer work calls wherever you go? Talk about taking your work home with you. Work phones should stay in the office. If employees want to answer calls on the road, maybe their employer should consider some kind of call forwarding functionality. Juggling multiple phones for home/work/etc is not something I'm interested in.
A party line is a single telephone line that you share with your neighbors. They were common in rural areas of the U.S. before WWII, probably becuase they were cheaper than dedicated phone lines (remember, back then each line was on a different physical circuit, and calls were switched by human operators).
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Until I can get a cell signal down here in my parents basement, I've got no choice but to use a landline.
*sigh*
Do you live in Aus? and if you do, how, unlike the rest of the country, are you getting away with not paying the telstra tax?
Here telstra owns the landlines, to use them for ANYTHING you have to pay line rental, the cheapest way to pay line rental is a basic telstra home phone service.
Interesting. We had a huge windstorm this past winter. I was without power for a week, and had friends who were without for nearly two. During that entire time, my cell phone continued to work perfectly. I used my car to keep the battery charged.
Your experience prompted you to get a landline. Mine has prompted me to buy a generator, though I'm waiting for a few more months when prices will be the lowest (we don't get power outages here in the summer, since it's not hot enough for people to overload circuits with A/C units). If anything, I came out of the experience with a more favorable impression of cell phones, as there's no way I would've been able to keep my old portable phone charged up that long and I couldn't take that out to my car to charge off the engine.
You should be able to call 911 on any landline that's physically connected, even if you don't pay for landline service.
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Yeah, but at events like Cochella they can bring out mobile cell towers so people can get temporary service in the middle of the desert. Why can't this be achieved during emergencies too? When I lived in FL we lost power/phone after a hurricane it took a couple weeks to get service back (who knows how many buried/tangled lines they had to repair). For emergency service it sounds a lot easier to strategically place a few vans all over the town while restoring the local infrastructure.
What cracks me up are the radio ads that go something like "Are you tired of your complicated cell phone plan? Well sign up for Verizular's new anytime family direct, and enjoy 1000 free anytime minutes for only $26 per month to the three people you call the most on even numbered weekdays. What could be simpler! Rates subject to change, void where prohibited, network maintenance surcharge and cost recovery taxes apply...etc"
It's the same as credit card promotions, grocery club cards and coupons, mail-in rebates, etc. You and I may realize how pointless all these offers are, but so many people love playing the game and thinking they got a great deal by finding the perfect plan that was made Just For Them. Nobody does anything unless there's some game aspect to it - warfare, terrorism, finance, dating, business, taxes, politics, you name it. We are so desperate to play games that we'll create them even for things as ridiculous as cell calling plans.
And more importantly for the industry, the pricing games allow them to avoid to avoid their service becoming a simple commodity. If the plans reflected their actual cost structure they would simply charge per bit, and fierce competition would quickly drive everyone's margins to nothing. But as long as they keep it a marketing game of adding ridiculous "value add" services and tricking you into complicated pricing traps, they can keep gouging.
In the US for voice calls it is billed per time on the air. So both receiver and sender pay, if they are both on mobiles. Basically the way a plan works is you get a certain number of minutes of airtime, generally unlimited at night and during the weekend when the cells are underutilised and a total pool of like 1000 during the week. Any time your phone is in a call, time is deducted from those minutes. Doesn't matter who made it, or what kind of phone is on the other end. Also many companies don't charge airtime for calls that stay on their system. So if you call a person and you are both with the same provider, no minutes are deducted for either party.
The only time you pay overcharges is if you exceed your airtime allotment, or you place a long distance call to a place that isn't included. Most plans include the entire US, so any call in the US is considered local. However they generally don't include international calls so you pay per minute for the call, same as you do with a landline. International calls to you are no different than any other, you don't pay anything other than airtime.
The net effect is that so long as you don't exceed your minutes, there tends to be no extra charges over the monthly plan rate.
No, outside the US, most mobile phones work on a caller-pays basis, just like landlines.
A lot of people prefer it like this - that way, whoever initiates the service usage pays for it, like most services, as opposed to you being at the mercy of whoever decides to call you a lot (tele-marketers, jerks, but I repeat myself, etc).
For example, I'm on a pay-as-you-go plan here in the UK - I certainly don't want people using up my credit if I don't want them to.
I think the US norm of callee-pays originally stemmed from the inability of the billing system/incumbent networks to cope with the other way, due to various limitations (but I could be wrong; it's been a while since I heard that, and my memory may be faulty).
I think the cellphone provider cartel in the US just wanted some extra cash. All phones in the US work on a caller-pays basis (other than included "free" minutes and various deals), including mobiles. But cell companies double-dip by having incoming, as well as outgoing, cellphone calls use up monthly minutes included in the plan, and charging the cell owner when those minutes aren't included.
I live in Australia, and was living in New Zealand when they privatised Telecom NZ (before the Telstra sale). I would have thought that the Australian Government would have taken some lessons from the Telecom NZ sale, and kept the copper network. If Telstra, and any competitors, were able to get access to the copper network equally, then competition would have provided enormous benefit to the Aussie household.
In NZ, Telecom (who 'own' the copper network) were saying that it costs them as enormous amount of money to maintain it - when Clear (their major competitor) offered to take this loss making asset off their hands (for a dollar), Telecom refused - I wonder why!
I hate the collapse of manners that has accompanied their arrival - people chatting on the phone whilst being served in a shop, taking calls in restaurants, talking about nothing on my commute ("I'm on the train") and so on. If people were more considerate in their use, I'd be more keen on getting involved.
I also value my private time and don't feel a need to be contactable 24/7.
Finally, being slightly risk averse, I don't like having a small microwave transmitter next to my brain for prolonged periods of time.
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On Mother's Day, my mom was asking about how much I pay for my cell phone bill and how many telemarketing calls I receive on a daily basis. She seemed truly interested in ditching the landline. So I had to remind her that without a landline the security system installed in their house will not function properly. Needless to say that ended that conversation. Security systems, such as ADT, require a house to have a landline. So until they change their practices and allow for VOIP or some other telecommunication avenue, the landlines will not be going away.
I calculate that around 2012, nearly all folks will be using POTS, if this excerpt from Wikipedia is correct:
"The last solar maximum was in 2001, and on 10 March 2006 NASA researchers announced that the next cycle would be the strongest since the historic maximum in 1958 in which northern lights could be seen as far south as Mexico."
Aren't we just one or two Coronal Mass Ejections from having all our satellites (and cell service among others) go kerflooey?
This is obviously some definition of "dirt cheap" with which I am not familiar.
Verizon will sell you ADSL without a land line in my market (Buffalo, NY) and as far as I know they'll do that anywhere in the country. Probably other providers will too. I've been without a landline for several years.
Unfortunately many countries, including Australia (though I understand Austel is looking into remedying this) are stuck on an anti-consumer caller-pays model ...
What? A model where the person performing the action pays for it. I call that logical and consider the US system anti-competitive.
meh
Let's see: ordering pizza, confused when performing simple task of dialing phone, paranoid for large portion of the day about "the man" showing up. I know what you were doing, you filthy hippie! :)
...sometimes, in order to hurt someone very badly, you have to tell that person terrible lies. - PA