Disconnect
The Houston Chronicle has a report that 1 in 5 U.S. homes now have cell phones only, no landlines: “The 20 percent of homes with only cell phones compared to 17 percent with landlines but no cells.”
Even worse for the landline companies is that the people in the homes without their service are generally much younger, than the people in the homes that only have landlines, so their client base is slowly disappearing.
One of the reasons for this shift locally is the absurd amount of money the phone company wants for a deposit, and the charge for “installation”. The landline companies have been pricing themselves out of the market.
Now you have CNet reporting Prepaid wireless service could spur price war
(CNET) — The prepaid cell phone market has finally hit the U.S. in a big way as economically strapped consumers flock to inexpensive pay-as-you-go services. The result will likely mean that big cell phone providers may be forced to slash prices on contract service plans to keep consumers from defecting.
This is good news for consumers, who could see lower prices on both prepaid and post-paid service plans. But it is very bad news for cell phone operators, which make more money from their post paid customers than they do from prepaid customers.
Again, a major culprit is greed, as evinced in this report on the CBC Rogers to charge customers without text plans for incoming messages
Rogers Wireless said Tuesday it would begin charging 15 cents for each incoming text message for customers without message plans, beginning on July 7.
The move comes about nine months after rival carriers Bell and Telus made similar changes in their policies.
The wireless carriers are charging people who don’t have, and may not want, texting service 15¢ if someone decides to send them a message.
Another point is that the companies are admitting that they actually have a lower profit margin on prepaid plans that their standard plans, which is why I have used a prepaid phone for years. Greed trumps everything. My current provider has a Mother’s Day special – buy a Samsung T301G phone from them for $50 and shipping is free and all of your airtime cards are doubled forever. A 120 minute card costs under $30, and it would automatically become a 240 minute card with this deal. The local wireless companies want to charge me at least $40/month for a minimal plan and sign a two-year contract.
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We went with Vonage. Our podunk phone company (not Verizon) wants $120 for the phone service. Comcrap doesn’t offer phone here yet, Podunk Phone system doesn’t cooperate with them. Cell service has been really bad here until this year, so going all cell may happen yet. Hub doesn’t like the idea of using cell phones all the time (you know, the radiation thing) so we may hold off.
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Cellphones in time of disasters….priceless.
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I have a very basic cell phone for myself, but I also have a land-line because the bill is only $20 something a month, and that includes caller id, call waiting, long distance inside the US….
Cellphones in time of disasters… useless. Cell phone towers, unlike wired phone substations, are not required to have emergency power and are not required to meet any standards of service.
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Well…I have to say that cell phones have been a godsend during our fires. Sure the connection is a little dicey at times…but truly helpful
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Down here the first phone service to die is that from the cable company because their lines are on poles and are dependent on customers have power to their modems.
Second is the landline phones, because while the lines are buried, their switches are too close to the coast and often get flooded. Their little green patch boxes also get shorted out by water.
The cell phone system is the only thing that works after a hurricane because their systems are inland and do have emergency power. I assume there are agreements through the Florida Emergency Management system and Public Utilities commission.
They may not work in Northern California, Badtux, but they are the only way to stay connected in Florida.
Sherri, I get charged $40 per month, and I pay 50¢ per minute for long distance, which I never use. The only reason I have a landline, is that you can’t get the local phone company to unbundle DSL from landline service. Basic telephone service with no extra features is $30/month, but the DSL package requires you have the “Standard” service.
Experience has taught me the same thing, Jill.
Right now it’s Hades….we set a record temp of 100 degrees today…winds gusting up to 60 mph…right now at 11:00 or so it’s close to 80 degrees….the sky is glowing…the new helicopters are lined up to get that killer shot. 3 firefighters had to be escorted to the burn center down south…we had a visiting truckload of firefighters manage to stay alive by finding shelter in the garage of the house they were trying to save but lost their truck..the fire melted it.
The only real problem I had with cellphones this afternoon was all the lookyloos leaning out their car slowing down with cellphone cameras in hand.
cookie jill´s last blog post..To quote Alannis….
I just posted my update. I went with a local TV station and the LA Times because the big guys aren’t talking. A visit from Miss California or a missing child might wake them up, but otherwise, nada.
Disaster tourists are the lowest form of life.
i love love love my prepaid cell phone, had it for some years now. i have some trouble waaaaay out in the boonies, but mostly the coverage is good and the price is great.
most of the cell phone towers here do have generators, so the problem after hurricanes tends to be from damage to the tower or to the equipment up there on top of the tower.
after ivan, my cell phone service and landline service both were about equally iffy the first couple of days.
lessee… i think the timeline goes like this… i loved at&t for a long time, then they split up and they were still way better than bellsouth, but gradually the two companies switched places, with bellsouth becoming downright excellent and at&t becoming downright crappy, so i switched and was happy again for a time. then at&t took over bellsouth and ruined it all, both on service and on price.
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We had Central Telephone which was bought by Sprint while was spun off as Embarq, and the service has declined while the cost has jumped up. It’s all about profit because they need high profits to pay the debts they have run up buying out the smaller companies.
They have de facto monopolies, so they just don’t care about customers. Large shareholders and the upper management are the only voices heard in the modern business environment.
I went cell-only years ago, and I’ve never regretted it.
If DSL service wasn’t a much better value than cable, I would dump the landline in a heart beat. It provides me with nothing but another annoying cable.
Why do you think DSL is better? It tends to be slower and more expensive than cable internet, and in some places (this varies, of course), it’s unreliable. The only advantage of DSL is the you’re not sharing bandwidth with the whole neighborhood, but that’s not worth the higher price. JMO, of course.
OT -you’ve got a beautiful blog here. I’ve always loved this theme, used it myself, a while back. It wasn’t as nice as yours, though.
In my market the phone company and the cable company magically charge exactly the same price for their services.
The phone company uses buried cables which aren’t constantly getting broken during storms.
The cable network has been soaking up bandwidth with new services without increasing cable capacity, so the system is getting visibly slower over time, while my DSL speed has increased recently because of better technology.
If you are in an area that has competition, you will certainly be able to make better choices than I have, but at some point I will probably shift to satellite to say good bye to both of the local monopolies.