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It’s Official: FCC Says There are More Wireless Customers than Wireline It’s a revolution that everyone predicted, but it took until 2004 for cell phone subscribers (181.1 million) to exceed the number of land lines (177.9 million). It would be easy to proclaim POTS (Plain Old Telephone System) as moribund, but this article is a reminder of three things. First, a “land line” goes to a household or a business, and some households and businesses have several people using the same land line. A wireless phone is a personal communications device; so, a four person family often has four different cell phone subscriptions. Therein lies the revenue potential of personal wireless services and the flaw in the argument that there are more wireless customers than landline users. Second, old-line land line telephone companies are not likely to disappear, because wireless carriers depend on them. Every wireless call goes through the Local Exchange Carrier (land line company) system. That’s the only way we can all have telephone numbers, whether wireless or land line: they’re all in the same system. Finally, land line companies are invested in wireless: Verizon owns Verizon Wireless while AT&T (formerly SBC) and Bell South own Cingular. All phone companies, wireless and land line, are experimenting with cable, cable substitutes (e.g., fiber optic coax) and broadband (e.g., Wi-Fi). Soon, a telephone will be a telephone will be a telephone. But remember: at this writing (2006), “personal wireless services” are subject to different regulatory rules than other forms of telecommunications. |
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Kreines & Kreines, Inc. |
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