Landlines

I’m one of those old-fashioned types who still has a landline.

I can’t remember when the last time I made an outgoing call on it. (Actually, that’s not quite true. On the day of the Marathon bombings, when there was no mobile service for a while, I used it to call the landlines of my local sister and local brother to make sure that they were okay, so I could email by traveling sister and non-local brother and let them know we were all safe.)

Once in a blue moon, I’ll use it my landline to dial into a conference call. Sometimes it’s just easier to be on speaker, and the landline is better than a smartphone for that. But an outgoing personal call?

Pretty much the only time I use it for one of those is when I’ve misplaced my Blackberry and want to track it down.

Mostly the landline is used incoming by a) good causes looking for money, even though I tell them time and again that I DO NOT give to anyone (other than one of my schools) that solicits me over the phone; b) political surveys and/or get out and vote calls; c) bad people trying to get me to give them my credit card information; and d) my dentist calling to tell me that I have an appointment the next day.

I hang on to it mostly for the fear factor of not having a landline to call 911 or whatever.  There’s also a sentimental attachment to the number, I suppose, which I believe I’ve had for nearly forty years now.  But I’ve had my cell phone number for nearly twenty years, so sentimental/schmentimental.

My “real” phone is my cell. On my landline, I have the most minimal plan allowable, and augment the local coverage with a two-buck a month long distance service from some little phone company in Maine. On my cell phone, I have the mega-minutes plan, plus texting, and, of course, Internet access.

My husband, the last person in America to not have a cell phone, has a VoIP-based Magic Jack number, which mostly works, if you don’t mind terrible reception. But if the phone call matters, he uses the landline.

While those of us of a certain age keep the home-phones going, many of us are at least quasi-ambivalent – how’s that for an expression of ambivalence -  about keeping a landline home phone. But for the “young folks”, it’s a no-brainer. They just use their cell phones.

This, of course, means that, just as young folks won’t know what it’s like to dial, use a pay phone, call collect, or memorize their friends’ numbers, they won’t know what it’s like to pick up the family’s general phone and holler, “Hey, it’s for you.” Nor will they ever have to remember to tell a parent or sibling that they got a call, let alone actually take down a message.

All this reminds me of an experience my sister Trish had answering the family phone – PL-35811 – a few years after my father had died.

The caller was none other than a childhood friend of my father’s, one “Moko” Doyle, a fellow who had figured largely in tales of my father’s youth. Moko had been something of goof-ball, a not especially bright guy who was a trouble magnet. When my father was evaluating the friends of my brothers, it was not an entirely good thing if my father characterized any of them as a “Moko Doyle.” (There were worse designations, I must say. A “Moko Doyle” was at least likable. A bum, a louse, a crook, a complete POS, was a Vincent P. Egan, but that’s a story for another day.)

Anyway, Trish was home alone when she answered a call from Florida, Moko checking in with his old pals after many decades away.

My sister, still just a kid of 14 or 15 at the time, had to tell Moko that my father was dead.

He then asked about my Uncle Charlie.

No, Trish was sorry to report, Charlie had recently passed away.

Spike? Moko asked hopefully.

Alas, Spike was gone as well.

Poor Moko, reciting the litany of his boyhood friends, only to find them all gone. (Poo Trish, having to give Moko the news.)

Finally, Moko asked about Nemo, who, Trish was happily able to report, was still among the living.

With no landlines in the house, calls from the likes of Moko Doyle will be a thing of the past. Exchanges like this will all happen on Facebook or LinkedIn.

It’s not just homes, of course, that are getting rid of landlines. Businesses are hanging up on them, as well. (Hanging up: another thing that doesn’t happen much anymore, either.)

Of the nearly 300 employees at Evernote, only a handful – those in customer support, for the most part – have a landlines.

At Facebook, it’s the same deal for their 5,000 employees. Ditto for the 53,000 workers at Google.

Silicon Valley companies big and small are pulling the plug on desk phones in favor of mobile devices. While consumers have been cutting the cord for years, businesses are joining the trend at an accelerating rate thanks to the increasing capabilities of mobile devices, which make it easier for workers to be productive and stay connected from any location at all hours. (Source: Bloomberg.)

Which, of course, means that there’s no cutting the cord between work life and personal life, a condition that has been in the making for a number of years – and is not an unalloyed good.

That aside, the trend really spells trouble for the landline equipment and networking providers like Alcatel and Avaya. Business spending on landlines fell by one-third between 2008 and 2012, and is expected to plummet by the same amount between now and 2016.

And for the telecom providers like AT&T and Verizon, it means figuring out to squeeze more revenues out of wireless as the cash cow of landlines dries up. I’m sure that they’ll figure it out. After all, they have plenty of experience with the decline of Yellow Pages and the end of personal “rental” of phones, which was what the model was in the good old days. (A few years ago, we were visiting my husband’s elderly aunt and realized that, although she had, maybe a decade or so earlier, replaced her old black rotary dial phone with a jazzier number, she had been paying $9 a month fee for that old Bakelite number month in, month out.  We called “wrong number” and returned it for her, although, as I recall, there was some super hassle about sending it back.)

As one guy interviewed for the Bloomberg article – the head of a start up where everyone uses their personal mobile phones for work (and gets reimbursed for overages) – said:

"You just don’t need desk phones. We talk over e-mail, text message, chat clients, social networks. "

This is, of course, true.

I do a lot of my client communicating via e-mail. When I was still working full time, I hung out with remote colleagues on IM. But there are plenty of times where you really do need to get on the horn and actually talk-talk with someone: not over e-mail, not over text, not via FB.

Sometimes you really do need to pick up the phone and call.

At which point, it really doesn’t matter if you’re using a landline, a cell phone, or Skype.

As the AT&T ad used to say, back in the day when Bell ruled:

Reach out and just say ‘hi’…

Hey, they’re waiting to hear from you.

Come on, admit it. Don’t you like to get a call once and a while from someone – business or personal -  who just wants to yack for a while?