Wednesday 3 December 2014

Landlines giving a final boost to mobile usage?


According to the BBC, the major landline providers are raising their line rental charges to approximately £17 per month, three times the rate of inflation.

Ofcom figures confirm that while the number of residential lines has risen, this has been more than offset by a fall in the number of business lines.  However, call usage on landlines has fallen by 12.7% in the year to June 2014….

Given the increase in mobile usage, the ultimate move to user convenience, this makes the idea of having to be anchored to the home ‘to receive and make calls’ seem Neanderthal…

It seems obvious that any increase in landline installations is surely arising from a need to bring wifi to the household, a position increasingly under threat from mobile operators willing to develop a pricing model that ‘wifies’ a home at something less than £17 per month.

In other words, in the way that the Post Office price-increases & and postal strikes boosted the growth of fax machines, so too are price increases drawing attention to the increasing redundancy of that old fashioned telecommunications technology on the hall table… 

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