A United Kingdom survey predicts the once-ubiquitous landline will disappear from offices within five years. Two in three (65 percent) of 500 CIOs polled by Virgin Media Business said they expect landlines to disappear from everyday use within that timeframe.
It probably isn't true.
For starters, however, feast on the survey's details: Tony Grace, COO of Virgin Media Business, said in the press statement cited above:
The pace of change with technology is having a transformative effect on the way we work. A decade ago it would have been unthinkable to suggest an office without telephones. Now it's hard to imagine being separated from our smartphones.
So why am I -- a longtime mobilityjournalist and cellular fanboy -- skeptical about the demise of landlines?
My reality: I ditched my landline three or four years ago, getting by with a cellular phone supplemented by Skype and Google Voice. I cannot say I have ever missed the landline. But my experience -- in Jersey City, NJ, in the midst of a plumped-up metro New York T-Mobile 4G network -- is not necessarily the same as an office worker's, and as I read the Virgin release I flashed on the many office towers and hotels where I have been in the past few years where cellular connectivity has been anemic, or sometimes non-existent.
It is one thing to picture an all-mobile workforce. It may be something entirely different to truly deliver it.
Peter Cochrane, a futurist, told the Telegraph
that most offices are not ready to make the leap into an all-cellular world. What needs to happen, said Cochrane, is wider deployment of optical fiber in offices -- and also in homes -- to make the Virgin prediction come true.
Cochrane elaborated that the end of the landline is near -- but don't bury those old phones just yet:
The public switch telephone network will be closed down, it's about as relevant as morse code. Optical fibre will replace landlines and most devices will connect using wireless. But the landlines can't go until there is wireless connectivity to replace it. There won't be wireless connectivity to replace it until there is optical fibre available to offices and homes in sufficient density.
More skepticism comes from an online poll
conducted by CBC Canada that found -- when I last checked the results -- that 56 percent of some 2700+ respondents said the landline remained their "primary" phone. Only 19 percent said they did not have a landline. True, that is a survey of present use -- it did not ask about five years hence.
But there remains the problem that in many places and in more buildings, cellular just is not ready for prime time. Typically there are fixes -- WiFi networks can be tapped to supplement feeble cellular signals, for instance, but that involves its own costs around delivering robust enough broadband to handle the voice throughput.
Personally, I am now involved in a move to north Scottsdale, Ariz., where T-Mobile claims my cellular connectivity is "good." But it seems weak to me and to at least some of the people I have been talking to. That is why for the first time in years I am mulling signing up for a landline.
Mind you, I am not in the middle of nowhere. Scottsdale is on the outskirts of America's sixth most populous city. And still my tepid connection has me pondering a return to a landline.
Deploy more cellular broadband, as Cochrane suggests, and of course the mobile phone is dramatically better than a stationary landline. That is obvious. But when the mobile capacity gets set up is not so obvious. Not in the US or the UK.
And that is why I am skeptical that in fact we will collectively jettison landlines in five years or even 10 years. The day definitely is coming when they will be part of history, but when that day comes is now impossible to predict.
It seems to me that in an office, the critical mass of people is going to make landlines less expensive than cell phones -- if for no other reason than that it's unlikely that everyone in the office is going to be on the phone at the same time, so you don't need a line for everyone, whereas everyone would each need their own cell phone.
I lived the broadband access problem. I met with the local government, the newspaper, the telecom provider. We still didn't get DSL until they were good and ready.
We still don't have immediate access to mobile service. One has to drive down the road a bit. I imagine that situation too will correct itself when the carrier thinks it's time.
Rual areas suffer much in the digital age. We didn't have access to broadband in the last place I lived several years ago - it was less than 10 miles from my current location in the same county.
DSL wasn't even an option there! The closest city is only 10 minutes away...
Mobile coverage was available long before high speed Internet access at our old house.
Had to laugh this morning, when I heard on local radio someone reacting to this news item by noting that his rural district still lacks mobile coverage.
Yes the mobile phone is definitely the more useful when compared to landlines, but the Mobile will not always be there and when you need to get to someone is a fixed location- the mobile isn't very adviseable.
So much as I see the mobile taking over the landline, there are scenarios where landlines will always make better sense.
While I don't use my office landline as much as I used to, I don't think it's going to get phased out anytime soon. The fact that it's an "office" landline is why it's so important: because it remains in the office.
I came across this realization after I took out a contract this year for a mobile landline phone, where I could call landline numbers and get charged the usual rates on a mobile device. It was convenient, I won't deny that. But the number of calls I got over the weekends was just crazy. I eventually decided to keep it on for half of Saturday and turn it off the rest of the weekend.
Consumers will often ditch their landline because they need a cellphone anyway, and the decide it's good enough, even though the landline is more reliable.
But good enough often isn't good enough for business. And many employees don't need cellphones for work.
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