Tom Evslin: No Landline Phones in 2013. Huh?
Tom Evslin writes There Won’t Be Any Landlines in 2013. He’s a very smart guy, but very wrong in this case.
Evslin keys of teh T-Mobile announcment of dual mobile and Wi-Fi handsets. That’s important news, but it does not extrapolate to the conclusion that landlines will be extinct in 2013.
He does serve up some interesting factoids:
[tease]
The number of landlines nationwide is already declining– especially now that they’re not needed for dialup Internet access. A story in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution sites a census bureau study saying that the number of household with landline phones declined from 96.2% to 94.1% between 1998 and 2003 while the number with cellphones increased from 36.3% to 62.8% during the same period. It’s reasonable to think both trends have accelerated in the three years since the study. In a regulatory filing in January of this year, Verizon said the Virginia now has more wireless subscribers than landlines.
[tease]
By 2012 no more reason to use our landlines – so we won’t.
Usually old technologies have a long tail. Mainframe computers are still around decades after people (including me) predicted their demise. I predicted that all calls would be VoIP by 2010. There’ll still be some POTs then (Plain Old Telephone Service) because not everyone will have broadband and clearly there’ll still be traditional cellular although that will be converting to VoIP rapidly.
But I don’t think the copper plant will last past 2012. The problem is the cost of maintaining and operating it when it has very few subscribers. Obviously a huge problem for AT&T and Verizon. And an important social issue as well.
Tom, give me a call in 2013. I hope you won’t be stuck in a mobile dead spot.