Back in the “olden days” we only had one, maybe two phones per household. They were all landlines and almost always in plain view of everyone in a hallway or common room somewhere.
Picture Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed in It’s a Wonderful Life when Mary’s on the phone with Sam Wainwright (“Hee haw!”) and George is right beside her. Neither Sam on the other line nor Mary’s mother upstairs knows what’s going on between them (for the moment).
“…and I don’t want to get married ever to anyone. Do you understand that? I want to do what I want to do. And you’re…and you’re…oh Mary…”
(Sudden old-movie exaggerated hugging.)
“George…George…George.”
(Old-movie exaggerated kissing.)
“Mary.”
(Then Mary’s mother seeing the whole show from the staircase and, of course, running back upstairs, aghast. The humanity.)
“Oh dear…oh dear…oh dear…oh dear, oh dear, oh dear…”
Yeah, that would never happen today. Especially between two adults who are supposedly a few years out of high school (actually, Reed was like 25 and Stewart like 38 at the time, not that it matters…that’s the movies).
Anyway, here’s a more likely scenario for today…
You walk into your home and there’s a pile of cell phones on the table by the door or on a counter somewhere. Or else they’re going off randomly with texts and email alerts and ringtones (different songs for different callers, let alone different phones).
There might be a landline house phone somewhere or else a few sitting dusty and silent around the house like gigantic relics from the Jurassic period. Or there might not be any landlines at all.
According to research by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) over the last few years, no landline phones is a more and more likely scenario.
The agency just released its latest data—one in four households are wireless-only as of June last year. Also, of the homes that still have landlines, one in six still takes most or all of its calls on wireless lines.
Actually, those numbers don’t sound like much because most homes still have landlines. But look at the trends…
The CDC’s July to December 2008 study showed that one in five households were wireless-only, and one in seven landline homes still took most or all of their calls on wireless phones. A year earlier, the study showed one in six and one in eight for those percentages, respectively. The wireless-only numbers are going up fast.
If we look at that scenario again (the new one, not the old one), it’s easy to see why landlines are going the way of the dodo.
You walk in the house. There are cell phones everywhere. There’s a dusty landline phone or two. The cell phones are already costing a bunch of money every month. The economy is bad. It’s a no-brainer—get rid of the landline.
Besides, who wants their love life played out in the downstairs hallway in front of someone’s mother or (better or worse, you choose) your own mother.
To see where all this is headed, check out this post too…The Old Telephone Poles.
