I was talking to a coworker today about having a land-line. Coincidentally, there is an article today on MSN wondering what is killing the land-line.
The article is right, the lines seem to be drawn on age boundaries. Most of my coworkers who are younger don’t ever bother with a land-line. All they need is their cellphone. Most of the older people in the office have one, but admit that they hardly if ever use it becasue of their cell phone. Unfortunatley, I fall into the latter category, although not by choice. I do have a land-line but I have it because my girlfriend uses it for work (she works from home and needs to be on a lot of conference calls). But, like most people my age, I really don’t have any need for one.
If this isn’t a reason to short stocks of telecom companies which only have land-line based businesses (Qwest comes to mind) I don’t know what is. Even those companies like AT&T and Verizon probably face pretty uncertain futures given the commodity business cell phone carriers provide. I myself have, in the past eight years, used all the major providers at one time or another. I did it because it was easy to switch (even easier now that there is number portability) and I had no reason to pick one over the other.
What will change even more in the future will be that most won’t even need a phone. Most people are just going to need something that can send a text message. While people my age may or may not use the feature very much, just go younger by about five years and it is pretty much the only form of communication used. The voice functionality of cell phones will be like the camera today. It will be on every phone, but few people will actually use that functionality.
Do you have a land-line? If so why?
I need to have a land line for my business (credit card swiper).
land line -> fax.
cell -> text. but I don’t see text ever replacing voice completely. sometimes it’s just more efficient to just talk. it all depends on what you’re trying to communicate.
I don’t see texting replacing phones. Talking to a person has a different effect than texting.
I don’t think texting will completely replace the voice capability. I just think this “feature” of a phone is going to be much more of an afterthought than it is today.
I predict video telephoning will take over. Maybe in another 4 years, every cell phone will be able to display the person you’re talking to as if that person were there in person.
There are certain things that don’t translate via text messaging: your voice, your tone, your sincerity and your personality. These human aspects are crucial to certain types of people, as you probably have encountered. Certain colleagues just respond better when you talk to them rather than just sending an email or text.
My grandparents prefer a land line over a cell phone. I guess they’re just used to a land line.