Statistics Canada has just released a report on Canadian cellphone and residential landline phone usage and the results are quite surprising.
“As of December 2006, about 90.5 per cent of households reported having a land line, while 66.8 per cent reported having at least one cellphone,” the federal agency said in a release. I haven’t used a landland for at least four years even though I’m still using the same phone number that’s been ported to my cellphone. It’s just so convenient to have only a cellphone because during the day, I’m at work so I don’t need a phone and during the evenings and weekends, the cellphone gets used because the minutes are pretty much unlimited for my needs. I usually go with the cellphone provider that offers the best prices and service. If the offerings are all very competitive, I will go with the smaller guys but that strategy has proved to be useless. There was once a wireless cell provider called Clearnet that’s been swallowed up by Telus Mobility. Telus Mobility continues to use Clearnet’s branding and cute ads with the elephants, monkeys, and penguins.

Because I wanted to go with a GSM provider for easy phone switches, my choices were cable/phone giant Rogers Communications and Fido Solutions. Obviously, I picked Fido because they were smaller and had the cute doggie commercials because they are now part of Rogers anyways.

In this day and age of mobility and the on-the-go mindset, I’m really surprised that 90.5 percent of households still have a land line. First of all, lands lines aren’t cheap to have because after you add all the features (Caller ID, call forwarding, call waiting, voice mail, etc) they cost more than most cellphone plans. Secondly, there are many substitutes for the traditional land line such as VoIP phones, digital phones, and Skype. Most importantly, land lines are not transferable. For example, if you move from Vancouver to Whistler, there’s a really good chance that you will lose your phone number that all your friends, families, and peers already have. The other alternatives allow you to maintain the same phone number through-out without any hassles to switch or notify everyone about the new number. I believe that the days of the land line are numbered and it’s only a matter of time before cellphones will be the dominant choice for communication. The change will not be overnight but change is inevitable.