When my phone rings I rarely answer it. That’s a big cultural change for me, because I spent much of my career working for a telephone company where answering the phone (within three rings in a tone of unflagging courtesy) was pretty much mandatory. Even the company president answered his own phone.
I don’t answer the phone because 90% of my calls are unwanted solicitations or attempted fraud, often robotic. When the phone rings I look at the caller ID screen and ignore any call from an 800 service, or from a town where I don’t know anyone. If I miss a call that’s actually relevant I’m confident the caller will leave a voicemail. I still pick up the phone more than I care to because technology allows fradulent callers to “spoof” local phone numbers.
It’s good to see the government taking more action to curb junk phone calls, but so far the scammers have been undeterred by either laws or technology. I do not expect this to change.
Happily, there are alternatives. I am communicating more by text, email and Facebook message. More people are using Facetime and other video calling services. Many people are disconnecting their landline phones and I probably will follow suit. The voice telephone call may be going the way of the buggy whip.
This a milestone because ubiquitous telephone service helped define the Twentieth Century. When I joined Illinois Bell in 1968 the Bell System was one of the biggest organizations in the world. Everything about it was gigantic: a million employees, buildings in every town in America; the largest private fleet of motor vehicles; the nation’s top research lab; the world’s most widely held stock; revenues larger than the economies of entire countries; and a manufacturing arm that processed much of the world’s supply of copper. One factor that spurred the development of dial telephones was that the anticipated demand for telephone operators threatened to exceed the number of women in the U.S. labor force.
It was an American success story. A regulated monopoly supported the national goal of universal telephone service and attracted the billions in private capital investment needed to make it happen. By the late Twentieth Century more than 90% of American households had phones. To dissuade the government from breaking up its monopoly the Bell System developed radar during World War II and released its patents (like the transistor) to the public.
It was probably inevitable that technology the Bell System developed led to its demise. The “natural monopoly” of telephone service disappeared when lower-priced computerized switching equipment and microwave data transmission enabled competitors to enter the telephone business without massive capital investment. Cell phones liberated people from a fixed network of copper, and the voice telephone service that once required buildings full of specialized equipment now is just a software feature on a generic server. For many people (myself included) “landline” phone service now comes via the Internet instead of the traditional telephone network.
The voice telephone call, once the only wheel in town for electronic communications, now competes with text, video, pictures and anything else that can be displayed on a screen. The majority of people who still prefer voice calls now make them on cell phones as landline phone penetration has fallen below 50%.
The final nail in the coffin of voice telephone service may be the technological wizardry that enables fraudulent callers to stay a step ahead of call-blocking systems. When the majority of calls are unwelcome, who’s going to answer the phone?