Friday, January 23, 2009
According to a J.D. Power and Associates study, 25.2 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds use a cell phone instead of a land line. As land lines continue to bring telephone companies less revenue, smart phone technologies are costing students, such as Dan Persons, more money than in the past.
See how wireless use stacks up nationally.
Persons, Towanda freshman, said he paid $50 more for his current phone than he had for any of his other cell phones. Persons can send unlimited text messages, record videos and make to-do lists on his calendar all on his cell phone. Now, all the tools on his cell phone make the idea of using a land line seem silly, he said.
“I like to have a cell phone that’s always on me, so I don’t need a land line at all,” Persons said.
With the growing percentage of people ditching land lines for cell phones, telecommunication companies have had to adjust to make up for lost revenue. Andrew Parise, Sunflower Broadband account executive, said land line telephone providers might not know the full long-term effects of this trend.
“We hardly ever sell land lines — it’s very rare,” Parise said. “Students usually won’t ever buy it.”
The study, released in 2007, found that people spent an average of about $1,600 on their cell phones and about $1,100 on land lines. Despite the lackluster sales, telephone service providers are still finding ways to stay afloat. Parise said that by bundling cable television, Internet connection and telephone services, Sunflower Broadband hadn’t been severely affected by the declining sales of land lines.
“I would say out of every 100 customers, you might sell two packages including phone service,” Parise said. “But now it’s just an extra benefit we offer.”
While the Internet is one tool that’s helping keep telecommunication companies alive, Taylor Hoover, sales representative at Wireless Stores, 520 W. 23rd St., said that as the Internet became more available on cell phones, land lines could become just another unnecessary cost.
“I think people are spending so much money on their cell phone bill that they don’t have enough money for a land line,” Hoover said.
breakbox
Who’s abandoning land lines for cell phones?
Age range Percent
18-24 25.2
25-29 29.1
30-34 12.4
45-64 6.1
65-plus 1.9
Renters (26.4 percent) were more likely than homeowners (5.8 percent) to use wireless. 12.8 percent of households did not own a land line. 54 percent of unrelated adults with no children went without a land line compared with 10.5 percent of adults with children.
Source: Survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Smart phones with Web browsing capability, though expensive, are especially popular among college students, Hoover said. Though J.D. Power and Associates found that people spent an average of $80 more for smart phone features, the same study also found that customer satisfaction increased as more features were added. Hoover said that even though it was more costly, he understood why people would be willing to pay more for cell phones with additional features rather than getting a basic land line for less.
“I think people just go overboard on things so you see higher demands for options like Web browsing,” Hoover said. “But what’s the point in getting a phone if you’re not going to use the full capability of it?”
— — Edited by Sam Speer
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