Death of the landline? Not yet.

This must be the fifth or sixth year running that various tech gurus have been pronouncing the landline well and truly dead [cleanlink.com] as part of their new-year predictions [infoworld.com]. You've surely seen such reports by now, and there is at least a bit of truth to the notion that some people are giving up hard-wired communications [businessinsider.com] in favour of mobile. Is the landline really on its way out, though?

Not this year, not by a long shot.

It's certainly true that an ever-increasing segment of the population doesn't have a landline phone. About a quarter of Americans now fall in that group, and that fraction is quite a bit larger in less developed countries- their carriers decided, rightly, that putting up cell towers instead of copper wire would be a cheaper and better way to get service into previously under-serviced areas. So why don't the rest of us follow suit?

While some players in the telecom industry hate to admit it, there's a fairly large segment of the population that is financially literate and isn't easily swayed by the latest shiny, flashy gadgets. They just want simple, reliable voice and data service at an affordable and predictable price. It's awfully hard to apply any of those terms to the Canadian mobile market: the major carriers' pricing and contract structures are notoriously hard to decipher, the "zero bars" problem continues to plague all but the most densely populated regions, and horror stories of four-figure cell bills [cbc.ca] and collaborative price-fixing abound.

The market for landline voice and data service, on the other hand, is at least slightly competitive in most Canadian cities (rural and remote users, of course, aren't nearly so lucky). Mobile options are mostly restricted to Rogers, Telus and Bell, and their alternate brands; with Bell and Telus teaming up on many things and the "new players" restricted to a handful of urban cores, there's only an illusion of choice in this market. A consumer hunting for landline service, though, can usually choose between a telco, a cableco or two, and at least one or two local carriers that, while they lease line space from the big guys, are independently owned and managed. That bit of competition, combined with the lower operating costs and greater data capacity of the current fixed networks, keep landline service quite a bit cheaper than wireless. How much cheaper? Try $41 a month [cogeco.ca] for unlimited high-quality voice to all of North America, versus "poor voice quality and no unlimited, but start with sixty bucks and you can rack it up from there"[Telus, Bell, Rogers] for the cellphone equivalent. Or $37 a month [lara.on.ca] for a 5 Mbps data stream with a 200 GB monthly cap, versus $65 for one-twentieth as much data [Telus, Bell, Rogers] on a 3G modem.

Most of us aren't as mobile as we might be led to believe. Most calling and online activity is still done at home or at the office, even if it's on a cellphone. When we're busy and not in one of these locations, we're most likely in a car- and if you find yourself checking email behind the wheel, it's time to see a psychiatrist. When we do use high-bandwidth features on our mobile gadgets, it's usually on a WiFi network- meaning it's either your own landline or your coffee shop's that's doing the heavy lifting. Mobile certainly has immense appeal, but I think a lot of people just don't see a pressing need to be completely connected, 100% of the time. At current prices and with current limitations, of course.

Mobile needs predictable pricing and reliable service without arbitrary usage limitations if it's going to replace hard-wired service. When I can get sixty gigs of any data I like, tethered to any device I like, along with unlimited conference-quality voice to the whole continent, on a mobile device for less than the $90 or so(tax included) this level of service costs on a hard-wired network, maybe I'll think about ditching the landline and going fully mobile. And maybe the remaining three-quarters of the population will think about it too. So until the surcharges, hidden fees, arbitrary limitations, contracts and cancellation fees of questionable legal validity, long distance charges and insane overage bills disappear from the mobile market, let's hold off on the "landlines are dead" talk, OK?

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