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Mobiles Conquer Land Lines for First Time in 2007
Posted by Mark Wilson at 1:32 AM on December 19, 2007
According to a recent piece in the NYTimes, 2007 will be the first year in which the dollars spent on mobile phone subscriptions trump traditional land lines. Among other points, they site that in 2006, households spend an average of $US542 on residential lines while only spending $US524 on wireless services. Add another year of mobile phone growth to those figures, and it's hard to believe that land lines are still king.
What about your household? In mine, we definitely spend more on our cells than our obligatory, barebones land line. Of course, if you factored in all of our wired services (including internet and television), the phones lose by a small margin. [nyt]
Comments (AU Comments · US Comments)
There are currently no AU comments for this post.
KeithJ
Posted 2:53 PM 18/12/07
I only use my cell phone. Even my parents have canceled their land line.
KeithJ
Kruel
Posted 2:46 PM 18/12/07
I wonder how many like me have landlines but don't use em? I got one simply because it comes with DSL (cable sucks in my area). I don't have a phone hooked up though, because when I did I got sales calls all day.
Kruel
92BuickLeSabre
Posted 2:23 PM 18/12/07
@omg-ponies: Cool. Just promise you'll give me the heads-up on any hotshots, okay?
92BuickLeSabre
bjf201
Posted 1:31 PM 18/12/07
In reality the margins are probably even hire then they estimate. Personally the only reason I pay for land line service is to get the discounted package (triple play) from Comcast. I'm sure tons of people are in the same boat. The true measure would be the amount of minutes used by each service, not the amount of subscribers.
bjf201
omg-ponies
Posted 1:25 PM 18/12/07
@92BuickLeSabre: Patience, padawan. Copper, like all commodities, is priced based on supply and demand. Sell too much copper and you'll see the price drop. You can't just sell every bit of copper wire you pulled out of the wall at once.
Besides, it's easier to steal as copper pipes from construction pickup truckbeds.
omg-ponies
92BuickLeSabre
Posted 12:37 PM 18/12/07
@strider_mt2k: Let's tear it up and sell it for heroin dollars!
92BuickLeSabre
MikeHinds
Posted 12:25 PM 18/12/07
This being the case, it's time to expect DSL to be widely available without requiring a "dial-up" or "POTS Line" or "bow-and-arrow".
Widely available AND competitively priced.
I've had Vonage for three years. Fortunately it appears they may survive. Unfortunately I use it over a Comcast connection. Even more unfortunately, Vonage could wind up being purchased (assimilated) by none other than Comcast.
MikeHinds
tyskkvinna
Posted 12:07 PM 18/12/07
The only time I use a landline is when I'm at work. And even then it's pretty comical - we have three landlines and between them spend less than $100/month on them.
tyskkvinna
DSaddict
Posted 12:03 PM 18/12/07
used to have nothing but cell phones. started having kids and the wife wanted a landline just in case. got VoIP.
haven't had a landline in my house for around 9 years or so...
DSaddict
MINI Driver
Posted 11:56 AM 18/12/07
VoIP and Cellphone for me - Vonage has saved me a bleepin' fortune in the last 3 years - thanks big V!
Traditional English two fingered salute to the big telcos.
MINI Driver
strider_mt2k
Posted 11:37 AM 18/12/07
That's a lot of dead copper out there.
strider_mt2k
bbfreak
Posted 11:24 AM 18/12/07
I ditched the landline last year, and will absolutely never go back. 50 dollars a month for something that I hardly use is too much money. As for VOIP, hasn't been such a great year for VOIP, or did'cha forget about SunRocket going belly up? Then there was the patent infringement which left Vonage dishing out 39 million to 120 million a piece.
bbfreak
omg-ponies
Posted 11:11 AM 18/12/07
Sorry for the double post, but, if you ever needed a reason to discount the New York Times' tech news, it's this gem:
Indeed. What is this Voice Over Internet Protocol I've been hearing the youngsters talking about recently? Perhaps there is something to this Voice Over Internet Protocol - VOIP, if you will.
omg-ponies
omg-ponies
Posted 11:08 AM 18/12/07
Does VOIP count as a landline?
omg-ponies
lastpulse
Posted 11:00 AM 18/12/07
I only use cell phones...
lastpulse
White
Posted 10:57 AM 18/12/07
cite, dude. not site.
White
Captain Angry
Posted 10:52 AM 18/12/07
Landlines are a thing of the past. Everyone I know under the age of 25 uses nothing but cell phone service.
Captain Angry
strider_mt2k
Posted 10:21 PM 18/12/07
@92BuickLeSabre: Maybe not, bit it still brings to mind a vast unused network, even though it's likely not the case.
Re: Ray Bradbury's "The Silent Towns" from "The Martian Chronicles"
strider_mt2k
kerry
Posted 10:16 PM 18/12/07
For a few years there my cell bill was more than my landline, but now it's switched, $42 for the cell and $54 for the land line, including long distance, caller id, etc. I took off the $14 for DSL, so if that's included (and my cell bill includes unlimited data, so I suppose that's comparable with DSL included) it's about $68. Hooray for SERO!
kerry