SPOTLIGHT: Mobile and VoIP Doom Wireline in Oz

As goes Australia, so goes the world? Nearly half of household consumers with a phone Down Under prefer to use mobile phones as their primary means of communications, but there's a strong taste for VoIP too.

According to a new report from ACMA, the Australian Communications and Media Authority, 45 percent of households prefer to use mobile phones for voice. There are now almost 22 million active mobile phones in Australia and 90 percent of household consumers have both a fixed line phone and mobile phone.

Traditional fixed line service is also being threatened by VoIP. ACMA says 20 percent of household consumers have already used a VoIP service with more than 80 percent of households with Internet access being aware of VoIP. Further threats are expected as the younger population takes up new and emerging telecommunications services, avoiding their father's vanilla land line services.

For more:
- ITWire's report on the shift to Mobile and VoIP in Australia [1]
- ACMA's Australian phone consumers [2] report .

Related articles:
(U.S.) Households spend more on mobile than landlines [3]
DT posts earnings boost, landlines decline [4] 6.3%
Qwest earnings drop as landline losses swell [5]