Internet Access for Wired Phones?
Here's the problem:
Person S, from her home (wired) phone, calls Person O on his cell phone.
Person O is in a meeting and cannot voice-answer the phone.
If Person S had called on her cell phone, Person O could have sent a text message to Person S's cell phone stating that he couldn't answer the call until later.
Since Person S called on her home (wired) phone, Person O could not do this.
Person O ended up sending a message to Person S's cell phone, with no assurance that she'd see it (the phone might be turned off, it might be in another room, etc.).
This is just another instance in which wired phones are becoming less and less attractive, since wireless phones are getting more and more functionality.
This first hit me back in 1997, when I took a business trip to South Africa. This country has huge pockets of poor populations with little or no services whatsoever. One city in particular had no phone service at all. They solved this by obtaining several cell phones and sharing these cell phones among the population of the city. At first this struck me as bizarre, until I realized that it would take great expense to set up telephone land lines to the city, and that it would be much cheaper to get cellular access.
Some statistics indicate how prevalent cellular service is becoming:
[12/2004]
Global Mobile Users 1.52 billion
Analogue Users 34m
US Mobile users 140m
Global GSM users 1.25 billion
Global CDMA Users 202m
Global TDMA users 120m
Total European users 342.43
Total African users 53m
Total 3G users 130m
Total South African users 19m
#1 Mobile Country China (300m)
#1 GSM Country China (282m)
#1 in Handsets 2Q04 Nokia(35.5%)
#1 Network In Africa Vodacom(11m)
#1 Network In Asia Unicom (153m)
#1 Network In Japan DoCoMo
#1 Network In Europe T-Mobil (28m)
#1 In Infrastructure Ericsson
Global monthly SMS 36/user
SMS Sent Global 1Q04 135 billion
SMS sent in UK 3/2004 2.1 billion
This growth in cellular phone use has dramatically affected the pay phone industry. But other things are contributing to the demise of the pay phone (New York Daily News, 12/13/2004):
In the age of cell phones, those boxy pay phone kiosks that dot [New York] city streets may seem like relics of a bygone era. Now, a new city regulation is expected to make them disappear even faster.
In parts of the city, they're still a part of the fabric of life, providing the only 911 service available on the street and handling 3.2 million calls per week on 29,000 phones citywide.
But after years of complaints by community boards to limit the visual clutter, the city agency that regulates pay phones has recently banned ads on all new kiosks in Manhattan below 96th St.
At stake is some $25 million a year in ad revenues that subsidize pay phones throughout the city - and sustain scores of small telecom operators who install and maintain them....
"The ads helps us cover costs for phones that are in places where they are needed the most," said John Porter, president of East Harlem Pay Phones, which operates 60 phones. "If we don't have new advertising, then we can't grow and may even have to start pulling phones."...
Ads account for nearly 35% of pay phone revenues. The rest comes from coin-operation, which has declined over 40% in the last five years. Steiner said the ad ban also will remove incentives to add new service like Internet phones and wi-fi [wireless Internet access]....
"The visual clutter policy is a bunch of phooey," said Robert Brill, an attorney for pay phone franchisees.
He believes the ban is another way for the Bloomberg administration to promote more ads on bus stops, public pay-toilets and newsstands....
But things are looking better in the UK:
A campaign to halt plans by BT to remove public phone boxes from four Norfolk villages has forced the firm into a rethink.
It has agreed to preserve the payphones in the villages near Swaffham after a four-month David and Goliath battle by Ian Sherwood, a member of Swaffham town and Breckland district councils.
After receiving news that Necton, Shingham, Drymere and Bodney were to keep their phones, Mr Sherwood's message to villagers and councillors in other areas was: "Keep working on this. Persistence pays off."
The BT proposal affects 150 call boxes in Norfolk, including 29 in the Breckland area, and is a costcutting exercise involving unprofitable payphones, many in remote rural areas....
[Mr Sherwood] added: "In Drymere, for example, there are two houses not on the phone and one of them is a gentleman with an elderly mother. He needs that phone line to contact the doctor or emergency services."...
When the costcutting scheme was first announced, BT Payphones director Paul Hendron promised that services would stay in place for those communities that needed them most.
But he pointed out that the rise in mobile phone ownership had led to "a complete cultural change", with the number of calls from BT call boxes halving in three years....
And when the companies aren't taking out the pay phones, some are being stolen:
While his neighbors slept, Howard Kenneth "Ken" Evans worked in the shed behind his house -- beating quarters, dimes and nickels out of pay phones he had uprooted from parking lots in four counties, his wife said....
When he dragged his first sack of change into the house, Evans told his wife he was playing poker with his buddies. When she read about the rash of pay phone thefts in Johnston County and saw the machines stacked up in her garage, Sandy Evans connected the dots. She and their 4-year-old daughter moved to her mom's house in December.
The spree stumped law enforcement officers in Johnston, Wake, Harnett and Sampson counties and incensed phone companies. This week, a Johnston sheriff's deputy spotted Ken Evans breaking into a vending machine in northwestern Johnston County. Wednesday night, deputies hauled nearly 50 battered pay phones out of his garage, attic and storage shed and from beneath his house at 101 Skylar Drive in Four Oaks' Cedar Cove subdivision.
Evans will face about 60 felony larceny charges after officers and phone company officials sort through which phones were taken from which county. He is being held in the Johnston County jail on unrelated break-in and other charges....
"This is totally ridiculous," said Stan Lee, president of Southeastern Telephone Services Inc. "He destroyed $500 worth of equipment to get $50 worth of change."
Evans fed a cocaine habit on coins from pay phones, his wife said. Evans, 43, had been out of work as a commercial refrigeration repairman....
Stealing the pay phones was a gamble. Three phones stolen in Benson one night in December yielded nearly $400 in change. Most times, however, he was lucky to score $20, phone company officials said....
NOTE: I found out about the articles above from the news page of the Payphone Project, which documents the continuing disappearance of the pay phone.
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