It has been exactly one month since my wife and I decided to join the 1 in 7 Canadians (or two million homes) without a landline. The funny thing is, I completely forgot I ditched it until I was reminded by stumbling across a recent article on the topic. Apparently by the end of 2014, according to a survey by the Convergence Consulting Group, 26 per cent of Canadian homes will have only mobile phone service.
Our own reasons were as follows:
- We were paying $40 a month to listen to telemarketers, the only people who didn’t know our cell #’s.
- The concept of “calling” someone long-distance can be done on any device connected to the internet, at zero cost (or nearly zero cost if calling a landline).
- There are plenty of large , physical handsets that can be purchased if “shoulder-hold” nostalgia kicks in.
Another thing i have come to realize is that we are running into a semantic dilemma. The word “telephone” or “phone” used to represent a device that was used for only one function, calling. When the “cell phone” and “mobile phone” terms were born, they represented devices with which you could call on the go. That still made sense. However the modern term “smart phone” is becoming misleading since the “phone” feature of these devices represents a small fraction of their use. These are essentially little computers. You don’t call a computer a “smart word processor” or a “smart gaming device” do you? So what do you think we should call these little buggers?
BTW, we will eventually run into the same problem with the word “television” as more and more of these become 2-way interactive, web enabled devices with multiple purposes that you put on your wall.
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I’ve noticed a lot of people moving from the term “cell phone” to the more all-encompassing term “mobile”. They’ve been called that in the UK for years, and it can refer both to the phone functions and all the other things these indispensable little gadgets do.
I predict the television will be the “big screen” as it gets ever larger and can show content from, well, wherever!
“Big screen” , I like that. Screen size will essentially be the only point of differentiation.
FYI: There’s lots of great discussion on this blog post over on govloop: http://www.govloop.com/profiles/blogs/goodbye-telephone
MK
This is not only happening in Canada, but be happening worldwide in no time! It seems like every day I read about someone ditching their landline here in the UK. As you say, with other devices available with no cost, how much longer will they last? One thing in their favour – they don’t need charging every 5 hours like a smartphone!