Ever notice
how easy it is to find mobile plans with
unlimited minutes these days? Yeah, it's because they're about as valuable as pea coats in the dead of summer. With
more and more consumers
disconnecting their landlines in favor of using their cellie for everything, the art of communicating via voice is also becoming lost. According to "government and industry data" cited in a
New York Times report, the growth in voice minutes used by consumers has "stagnated," with 2009 being the first year ever in which the "amount of data in text, email messages, streaming video, music and other services on mobile devices [in the US] surpassed the amount of voice data in cellphone calls." Dan Hesse, Sprint's head honcho, even chimed in with this nugget: "Originally, talking was the only cellphone application; now it's less than half of the traffic on mobile networks." We also learned that the average length of a mobile call was just 1.81 minutes in 2009, a drop from the 2.27 minutes per call seen in 2008, with many individuals feeling that other communication methods (email, SMS, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) were far less invasive of someone's time, being that they could respond to those messages at their convenience. Of course, on the Upper East Side (where all the richies use Verizon dumbphones, apparently), we get the impression that yakking away about a cornucopia of drama is still the hotness.
posted May 14th 2010 6:01PM
So that's what that Phone icon in my App Launcher was for . . .
This is why rollover minutes are sooooo important.
@BabyShaker ha! they never WERE important to begin with, only a marketing ploy that I think used to work very well to dupe consumers. Not any longer however. I'd be surprised if they advertise "rollover" minutes for very much longer IF they still do that is.
@SParklingCYaNide
Right! Give me a service that will let me sell back my rollover minutes and now were talking. AT&T owes me.
@7777777777777
Haha. Oh I'm plotting. Oh yes. I'm plotting.
I hardly ever talk on the phone but I FB throughout the day and do most of my work on my iPhone.
It was fantastic on vacation in finding motels, directions, and places to go. Even had EDGE on the island!
How did we ever live without the net at our fingertips....all in our phones?
Sent from my iPhone at Dennys :-)
I told my cousin that they talk with their fingers more than with their mouths nowadays. She just LOL'd.
Personally, the only reason why I call more on my phone is that I'm driving most of the time. If I wasn't then I'd be wearing out my touchscreen.
I send about 3000 probably. And use maybe 10 minutes of voice minutes, lol.
And that's why the cell phone providers are laughing all the way to the bank.