"Serge Auckland" wrote in message
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"David Looser" wrote in message
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"Serge Auckland" wrote in message
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"Don Pearce" wrote in message
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Now this is interesting on the Beeb news web site. A bunch of graphs
showing gadget ownership. Phones, CD players and video recorders have
all peaked, and are on their way down. DVDs and mobiles are just about
plateau-ing. Internet related stuff is still climbing. For how long, I
wonder?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-12058944

d

Any survey of this sort depends rather on what the question is, and how
it's
answered. For example, the decline in telephone availability is
pointless.If
almost everyone has access to a mobile 'phone, then the need for a fixed
telephone, which is I presume what the question asked, goes away.

I'm not sure I agree with that. A mobile phone is a personal phone, a
fixed-line phone belongs to a premises; though I grant that this
distinction is more relevant to businesses. Also of course a fixed-line
phone is much cheaper to use, and isn't going to fail because the
batteries have gone flat or there isn't a signal.

I was also surprised that the domestic penetration of phones in 1970 was
only 30%, bearing in mind that they had been available in all except the
most remote parts of the UK since the 1920s, and in central London since
1880.

David.

When I was a teenager growing up in Surrey, which even then (late 60s) was
a reasonably prosperous area, many of my school friends didn't have
telephones at home. If one extends to other less well-off areas, I'm not
surprised at the 30% figure overall.

At the same time (or possibly a few years earlier) I was growing up in an
only moderately prosperous area of Middlesex, and I was not aware of any of
my school friends not having a telephone at home. Though I wasn't basing my
surprise on personal reminiscences, but on the fact that the telephone had
been available for 90 years, it seems a very slow uptake.

As to fixed lines, my son doesn't have a fixed line at home, he and his
partner work entirely off mobile communications even for internet. These
days, with the right package, it works out pretty much at a fixed cost
regardless of usage, so they have never seen the point, as they will need
to have mobiles as well as a fixed line, so why bother with the fixed.

I accept that there are those who take the view that your son does, but your
phrase "then the need for a fixed telephone.... goes away" implied that the
need has gone away entirely, which I disagree with.

I was talking about phones, but in terms of lines high-speed broadband still
requires a physical connection, either wire or fibre. And unless somebody
can discover a whole new radio spectrum it's likely to stay that way.

David.