Josh Welensky: Cost a good reason to consign fixed phones to history
Even with free evening and weekend calls, I barely ever use my landline. A few nostalgic calls home and a couple of late- night takeaway orders on my bog standard £13.90 per month BT line equals £2.50 per call. That’s a tough comparison with free. And guess what, it’s getting worse – BT’s recent price hikes which will add up to an inflation busting 14.2 per cent increase in costs since October 2010.
In the six months since I got my sparkling new HTC Desire HD Smartphone, I’ve yet to once plough my way through the 250 minutes of free calls or 500 free text messages I get per month. Things have come a long way since January 1985, when the UK’s first ever mobile phone call was made by comedian Ernie Wise to Vodafone’s offices in Newbury. Back then a Motorola DynaTAC would set you back close to £3,000, and even Vodafone predicted it would only sell a million at most.
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Hide AdEven with the 23.7 million residential land lines struggling to cover BT’s costs, I’ve got a certain affinity to BT’s repost that “if a conversation is worth having, have it on your BT landline”.
There’s little doubt if I was my brother’s phone a friend on Who Wants to be a Millionaire my mobile or Skype headset wouldn’t get a look in. There are also those life or death situations; Verizon was castigated in January by the US regulators for dropping over 10,000 calls to the emergency services during a freak snowstorm in Washington.
Before I talk myself into Freecycling my blower, there’s the small matter of replacing my broadband internet connection. Whilst Mi-Fi wireless dongles seem like a no-brainer, they tend to come with more strings than the London Philharmonic, especially for BBC iPlayer lovers.
If there’s one thing my Dad taught me, it was the importance of a back-up plan. So whilst landlines may be a declining breed, they’re a long way from becoming extinct.
• Josh Welensky is the technology writer for The Scotsman Magazine