Behavioral shift with cellphones
In what may be the start of an alarming trend for the nation's largest telephone companies, the total number of business and residential telephone lines declined last year for the first time since the Depression — to 192.3 million at year's end from 192.6 million a year earlier, according to the Federal Communications Commission.
While the rise of DSL (which has made a second line redundant) and economic uncertainity has contributed to this decline,
Nearly 3 percent of telephone users have made wireless phones their primary telephone, according to the Yankee Group, a telecommunications consulting company in Boston. So far the shift is evolutionary rather than revolutionary, but that is likely to change, said Keith Mallinson, an analyst at the Yankee Group.
..."It's a behavioral shift from the last hundred years in which we called a geographical place and got a person," said Jeff Kagan, an independent telecommunications analyst in Atlanta. "We're now moving to a model of calling a person — regardless of geography. The consequences of such a change could be profound."
Besides dropped calls and being more expensive if your provider does not offer free local calling, using your cellphone as your main phone also further blurs the division between work and home.