Landlines – Tell me, how does this end?

Wall Street analysts continue to obsess over landline losses. Stop the madness already! "Tell me, how does this end? [1]" is the real question worth examining.

Voice phone line losses have been on a downward spiral for years, but every quarter the numbers increase, there's more gnashing of teeth, pounding of the chest, more gloom and doom. It's fair to say that for the next five years there still will be more landline losses. Households are economizing by switching to cell phones and cable triple-play bundles with VoIP tucked in, while Millenials [2] aren't even considering traditional voice service.

Ask the hard question: What fraction of wireline's traditional consumer customer base will have home phone lines in five years?

Millenials will say "Zero," but they need to be forgiven for their youth and inexperience. Cellular service is not universal or ubiquitous by any stretch of the imagination and for various safety and comfort reasons, the old POTS RJ-11 still has a good bit of legacy left to it.

Is the real answer fifty percent? Twenty percent?  I don't know, but it would be interesting to have AT&T, Qwest and Verizon provide an answer and the logic behind it. Rural carriers (see Embarq/CenturyTel) will have a slightly different answer since cell towers aren't as ubiquitous outside of the Big City.

In other words, tell me how this ends.

At some point, losses will slow, if not level off to a steady pace. Farther down the road, phone companies will provide actual incentives for people to turn off their old POTS lines and switch over to broadband or wireless voice alternatives, because it will be too expensive and too much of a headache to keep the old gear in service.

Free phone service for a year in exchange for turning off your copper? The day may come sooner than anyone thinks.

VoIP has a big role to play in home communication service if femtocells don't squish out SIP handsets with "Lite" web browsers. Casabi [3] has been the leader in innovating SIP home phone services and did a deal with Embarq earlier this year; they were also flirting with AT&T two years ago at CES.

So, tell me, how does this end?

- Doug [4]