Dennis
Premium,Mod
join:2001-01-26
Algonquin, IL
2 edits | Glad to hear they're going out of businesss
From what I remember they were basically robbing students with their high prices because they didn't have a choice. |
|
sbrook
Premium,Mod
join:2001-12-14
H0H 0H0
 ·Rogers Hi-Speed
Host:
Rogers
Bell Canada
| To think people earn a living quoting stats!
What a meaningless statistic. 60% increase on say 10,000 homes is 16,000 homes. (That's not a realistic number btw ... just a number to show that this is not really a dramatic increase ... significant, maybe ... dramatic as it might seem, no way.
Of course they're pulling landlines out of dorms. It costs money to maintain them. With Cell, all the responsibility is now on the user. |
|
pnh102
Reptiles Are Cuddly And Pretty
Premium
join:2002-05-02
Mount Airy, MD
·Comcast
| reply to Dennis
Re: Glad to hear they're going out of businesss
Me too... remember AT&T ACUS... charging outrageous per-minute prices for long distance calls? Yuck. I also remember the last time I had to fight with an ex-roommate who ran up the local phone bill on his own and then refused to pay it because he was leaving the country. I almost had to rip his head off before he coughed up the cash to cover the charges. It will be nice to see fewer students going through that hassle.
Cell phones are much more practical anyway, given that many students change residences each semester. It only makes more sense to have one phone number which stays with you for all that time.
--
Hey Fast Eddie... you're next! |
|
av8r
I'd Rather Be Flying
Premium
join:2002-06-14
Boca Raton, FL
clubs:
| reply to sbrook
Re: To think people earn a living quoting stats!
said by sbrook  :What a meaningless statistic. 60% increase on say 10,000 homes is 16,000 homes. I think it was Mark Twain that said, "There are liars, damn liars, and statisticians."
--
"Jazz isn't dead, it just smells funny" - Frank Zappa |
|
Logwind
join:2003-06-20 |  I hate cell phone culture.
I refuse to buy one. If that means paying 50 cents to make a call home while on campus, so be it.
--
I am eating an apple. |
|
J D McDorce
Premium
join:2001-12-29
Westland, MI
| Back in the Day
While I need to go back a couple decades to revisit my own dorm life, the phone in my dorm room was more of a PITA than anything else. Beyond sharing the phone with two roommates, we were rarely there except to sleep (and, at times, not even then). There was also no such thing as privacy.
It's hard to say whether college campuses are a unique set of circumstances or reflective of a trend. It would follow, however, that as students become acclimated to their electronic tether and less reliant on land lines, they may tend to view land lines as obsolete once they leave college behind.
The only place where I see VoIP factoring into the equation is that many colleges offer high speed connections to their dorms. The use of VoIP as the only option for voice in the dorm room would eliminate the need for the campus to manage and maintain both POTS and data connections to each room. In this case, VoIP is merely a different form of land line, placing an entirely different spin on the cell/VoIP only revolution: VoIP competing with POTS for land line service and cell phones placing into the question the need for a land line (POTS or VoIP) at all. |
|
moby866
Premium
join:2000-10-07
Above you
 ·surpasshosting
·RoadRunner Cable
 ·Vonage
·CableOne
| I plan on it.
I plan on ditching my landline as soon as I can get the 911 service activated on my VOIP service. Since the street I live on does not show on any maps except for taxes and schools and water it makes it really hard to get the proper location set. My street did not exist at this time last year, I can't even get a pizza delivered without explaining it 3-4 times to different people when I call in.
--
Health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die |
|
x____
join:2003-02-13
____
clubs:
| reply to sbrook
Re: To think people earn a living quoting stats!
said by sbrook :What a meaningless statistic. 60% increase on say 10,000 homes is 16,000 homes. It rose from 2.0 mln in 2002 up to 3.2 mln in 2003.
That's not a meaningless statistic. |
|
djrobx
join:2000-05-31
Valencia, CA
·PHONE POWER
 ·AT&T U-Verse
·AT&T CallVantage
·Time Warner VOIP
·RoadRunner Cable
2 edits | reply to sbrook
quote:
What a meaningless statistic
I agree 100%! Better to include numbers 
*Edit* ... Even more useful if you include the "to 2003" part.
It would probably increase a lot more if people didn't need a landline to get DSL.
--
\\ROB - a part of the SCB local network |
|
Omega
Displaced Ohioan
Premium
join:2002-07-30
Cheyenne, WY
clubs:
·Bresnan Online
 ·Verizon Wireless B..
·Comcast
 ·AT&T Midwest
| reply to Logwind
Re: I hate cell phone culture.
said by Logwind :I refuse to buy one. If that means paying 50 cents to make a call home while on campus, so be it. You must live close to home then.
My school is only an hour away from my house. Yet, it is in a different area code, and any call home would constitute as long distance. The 50 cents from the payphone would add up quickly.
I could subscribe to a phone service, if I wanted to be ripped off. The local phone calls are 20 cents a call, and long distance is outrageous.
Then I have my cell phone - $40/month, free long distance, and free nights and weekends. With the amount of out of area code calling I do, I save a lot of money.
Since more students have cell phones, that means that if you are on a local plan, you might have to pay long distance to call the person who is next door to you.
--
My site
SBC DSL 2650/384 |
|
Kearnstd
Elf Wizard
Premium
join:2002-01-22
Mullica Hill, NJ | reply to Dennis
Re: Glad to hear they're going out of businesss
charging people to make local calls from a private telephone should be illegal. but colleges and motels still do it.
--
[65 Arcanist]Filan(High Elf) Zone: Broadband Reports |
|
djrobx
join:2000-05-31
Valencia, CA
·PHONE POWER
·AT&T U-Verse
·AT&T CallVantage
·Time Warner VOIP
·RoadRunner Cable
2 edits | reply to Logwind
Re: I hate cell phone culture.
quote:
Since more students have cell phones, that means that if you are on a local plan, you might have to pay long distance to call the person who is next door to you.
I think that's what he means by hating cell phone culture. Why not just walk next door, if the person IS next door? I think the biggest problem with "cell phone culture" is that people walk around in an isolated bubble instead of interacting with each other in person.
At the same time, it seems silly to deny yourself a useful piece of technology just because a lot of people exercise poor etiquette. If it makes sense, you can get one and use it privately like a land line. On the other hand if he's not making many calls, the land line may make more sense.
--
\\ROB - a part of the SCB local network |
|
gabeman
join:2001-05-03
Philadelphia, PA
clubs:
·Hotwire Communicat..
| It's Real
My school doesn't even offer the ability to add long distance service. Each room has a line with a local number that can call within the campus, 800 numbers, and receive incoming calls. It is included with the price of your room. The only way to make long distance calls of any kind is using a calling card or cellphone. I use my cellphone. I actually don't know anyone who goes to school here that doesn't have a cellphone (maybe they're the people who spend all day/night in their rooms).
--
make a blog!
Vote for Douche Nozzle of the Week! |
|
pandora
Premium
join:2001-06-01
Outland
·ooma
·Future Nine Corpor..
·Comcast
| Is it really the death of land lines? Not hardly.
The title seems a bit misleading. The change from POTS to VOIP is swapping one land line for another. It's still a land line. Thus the stats seem a bit confused. Arguably with DSL and what not, at some future point all hardware lines will migrate over to packet switching. This isn't the end of wire and land lines, merely the transformation from 20th to 21st century technology in line management.
--
"People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use." |
|
pantani101
join:2003-04-12
Camp Hill, PA
| reply to gabeman
Re: It's Real
I don't even know the room phone numbers for my kids at college. Even worse, they don't either. When we need to talk, its always with the cell phones. Except for the schools calling for donations and telemarketer calls, we would be getting less than 3 real phone calls a week on the land line. We eliminated long distance on the land line and do not miss it at all. |
|
SlashG42
join:2002-02-13
Metairie, LA | reply to av8r
Re: To think people earn a living quoting stats!
"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics." --Attributed to Disraeli in Mark Twain Autobiography (1924) vol. 1, p. 246 |
|
Techless
Like I care
Premium
join:2002-07-19
Hypoluxo
·Vonage
| The Telcos Don't Get It YET
The railroads once owned transportation in the USA.
They lost that because they thought they were a railroad company, not a transportation company.
The railroads made their customers find another company to provide a truck to get the cargo to the railroad and yet another truck to get the cargo from the railroad to the eventual destination.
They had an opportunity to provide transportation but didn't realize it and only provided a railroad.
It really didn't take long for the truckers to see that they could deliver it themselves without all the loading and unloading.
Today most goods are delivered from origination to destination by truck. There are the piggyback rail cars but they are hired by the trucking companies. So the railroads are now working for the trucking companies.
The telcos are now in a similar place.
They have the poles and leased space on poles. They can leverage their advantage and own all forms of communication by deploying fiber to the home (FTTH) or they can die a slow death and survive by subsidy only, like the railroads.
--
Al • Adelphia HSI • 4000/512 • Will Work For Captain Morgan |
|
whamel
Premium
join:2002-05-09
Clarendon Hills, IL
| College student here
As a college student myself, I would say that this article is correct and accurate all the way through. I am junior now at the University of Iowa and I personally do not own/use a land line at all (except for DirecTV updates). That may sound confusing, but I live in a fraternity, and the house we live in has one land line for the cook to use and for us to *technically* recieve calls. The only calls we recieve on that line are solicitors. When i lived in the dorms, my roomate and I didn't even activate our land line in our dorm because we had no use for it, plus it would require us to purchase a land line phone. As for next year, we will be living in a different house, and since we are served by Qwest, we plan on getting a dry pair to our house for DSL, but we'll see. Generally speaking, I do not know one person who actually gets a landline to their apartment or house here on campus anymore, and if people do get a land line, it is usually because they don't have a cell phone. |
|
RayW
Premium
join:2001-09-01
Layton, UT
clubs:
·XMission
| Back around 1995
I was seeing a lady who worked for SWBTS as a sales rep. At that time she was told that they were to try and steer people away from land lines and toward cell phones. It was desired that the only land lines that would be serviced would be those mandated by law for the 'poor' people who were on welfare. But that was before DSL hit the street.
Personally, after 30 years working in the RF field, I have a hard time wanting to put a cell phone up to my head, especially with the operating frequency of 2450 MHz. Other than that though, the idea of cell phones is a good idea since it could be made more national in scope unlike a land line with the 'fees' charged. But I wish I could get one that would have 100 minutes for $10 instead of 1000 minutes + unlimited off prime time for $50 and worked up in the 5.8 gig band.
--
I am not lost, I find myself every time. |
|
RadioDoc
58ef2c0
Premium,ExMod 2000-03
join:2000-05-11
·AT&T Midwest
| reply to Techless
Re: The Telcos Don't Get It YET
"So the railroads are now working for the trucking companies." In other words, they are providing transportation like a transportation company should, and they are charging their customers (those oh-so-efficient trucking companies who are dropping like files) for transportation of their cargo. Around here at least over half of the trains are nothing but containers on flatbed carriers. BNSF is doing quite well, too: »finance.yahoo.com/q?s=BNI&d=t
The transition to a more mobile society is more of a reason for the decline of 'land lines' than anything else. However anyone who is even half objective about it will admit that cell and PCS call quality still sucks and is getting worse. If you want to put up with that for $70 a month, go right ahead. Those "land line" companies, who own the cellular and PCS companies, laugh at you during their board meetings.
--
The revolution will not go better with Coke. |
|
