Many people have decided to toss their wireline phones and opt to use only wireless. According to a Wall Street Journal report, 5 million people dropped their wireline service in 2003. While many companies are making efforts to offer traditional services to those who have dropped wirelines, some services are still not available. DirectTV and Dish Network, the leading provider use wirelines to bill customers for services such as on-demand movies and DirectTV's premium sports package. Some credit card services such as Citigroup and American Express require a wireline to verify address information. The report also says that many home alarm companies must be tied to a wireline in order to call the customer when the alarm is set off, others generally charge an extra fee to offer back-up communications options. Although many companies still require the use of wireline, they are making efforts to offer services to customers that have chosen to toss the line and go wireless. (Source: Wall Street Journal)
This is an interesting point. With ubiquity of the phone, we have created an infrastructure that depends on its existence inside a residence, as a method of verification of existence of place. The presence of a wireless phone merely verifies existence of person which is at odds with the old infrastructure. It takes time to re-adjust. Curiously, one of my interview subjects had mentioned that she was thinking of getting a wireline because she felt totally helpless and unable to call her husband once when a satellite went down. Wireless has a bit to go to reach the reliability of wireline it seems...
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