Wireless And Broadband Stealing Landline Customers
Wired carriers have had it easy for the last few years. Demand for additional phone lines was skyrocketing. But those days are over. The Yankee Group predicts that landlines will drop from 122.2 million today to 112.4 by 2006, resulting in the first ever decline in the residential voice market. Wireless is a big factor in this decline. Already about 3 percent of U.S. households have replaced landline with wireless phones. A trend we suspect will continue. Broadband services are also cutting into orders for landlines with 37 percent penetration estimated by 2006. But for the most part the companies selling broadband are the same companies losing landline customers. If anything, broadband gives them a new platform on which to sell new services. Hopefully they’ll figure that out.
