Everything has to come to an end, whether it’s Ken Jennings’ winning streak on Jeopardy! or Tom Brokaw’s 23-year reign on NBC Nightly News or wireline telephony.
OK. That’s a tad drastic. Wireline telephony isn’t going to disappear, but it is morphing to remain relevant in a world enamored with mobility. Statistics released last week from the U.S. Census Bureau found that the wireless telecom industry is growing faster while the wireline industry, whether local or long-distance, is shrinking.
The writing is on the wall. People are not going to give up their mobility. It’s like voice mail. Once people had a taste of it, they can’t imagine how they lived without it. So even though wired telecom carriers reported twice the amount of revenue as wireless carriers ($223 billion vs. $104 billion in 2003) the shift is occurring. Wireless revenues increased 14 percent, while wireline revenues dropped 6 percent and long-distance revenues fell 13 percent to $53 billion.
Telephone carriers are paying attention. It’s why SBC and BellSouth decided to pay $41 billion for AT&T Wireless Services. That’s their future. It’s why AT&T Corp. is back into the wireless business. Further, carriers with interests in mobility and fixed wireline like Rogers in Canada are implementing services that allow wireless customer to send text messages to landline phones anywhere in Canada and the United States. Bell Canada is trialing a service that integrates 1x technology with fixed services. SBC and Sprint are integrating Wi-Fi services into their wired business plans. It’s all part of a grand scheme where customers will get the best of both wired and wireless services; where users won’t attribute some attributes to wireless service and others exclusively to fixed wireline service.
Wireline telephony has been successful in the United States because it is ubiquitous and it’s reliable. Very reliable. But cordless phones only take you so far, and this is a nation that moves.
Meantime, top wireless carriers are finally taking reliability more seriously: In making its UMTS announcement last week, Cingular said it plans to have the nation’s best network; Verizon says it has the nation’s best network; Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile USA won top honors in J.D. Power and Associates’ call-quality performance study earlier this year.
The best network matters.
So as wireline telephony is finding ways to add mobility, wireless telephony is finding ways to become reliable and more ubiquitous. And both industries are moving toward each other. Now that’s a smart match.
