it’s good to talk
When did you last use your BT landline? And even more pertinently when did you last actually answer it to an unknown incoming call? The answer is perhaps a fair bit if you’re over 45 but I suspect hardly ever if you’re under 30. Extrapolate this out and it’s not difficult to envisage the death of the landline. BT obviously can see this one coming a mile off and are planning to hike the cost of charges and call rates to attempt to keep them commercially viable, but they’re fighting a losing battle: raising costs will only accelerate the rate of customer departure. It’s days are numbered.
In the US of A, the proportion of landline free households that rely exclusively on mobile phones now stands above 25% and we’re not that far behind. Truth be told, it rarely rings these days and when it does we let it go through to the answer machine…where the messages languish in a limbo world before being deleted, unheard and not returned!
For today’s younger generations, brought up on a diet of mobile devices and constant communications landlines must seem particularly quaint and anachronistic. To them it would appear an increasingly alien concept to pick up a phone receiver without actually knowing who is on the other end. The change has undoubtedly further encouraged by our desire to text or email rather than speak to the receiver. The only downside to this, from my perspective as a old telesales guy, is it’s nigh on impossible to build a strong ‘obligation’ entity and personal contact dialogue into such a digital relationship…but I reckon not too many of you out there will complain about that!
