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That ship has long sailed, and I don't think young people for instance value much having a phone number, except for conforming to social norms (e.g. getting cal

That ship has long sailed, and I don't think young people for instance value much having a phone number, except for conforming to social norms (e.g. getting called back for a job offer) and SMS confirmation codes. Carriers are milking it as much as they can now, as they don't have leverage to otherwise stop any progress that would make phone numbers finally irrelevant.

BoxOfRain 5y ago
Those social norms are changing too, ten years ago I'd have phoned people out of the blue but these days I'd only do that for urgent matters because it's rude not to text first.
- LadyCailin 5y ago
  I don’t even text anymore, I just ping people on Facebook or discord or wherever. And then I’m likely to call them from my computer on one of those services too, which means the mobile carrier is 100% cut out of the loop.
somehnacct3757 5y ago
I'm from the last offline generation and don't hate the telephone, but the volume of spam calls my landline receives has to be 99% of rings. I may have gone to bat for landlines if there wasn't the spam problem as I think they have upsides over cell phones. Way better sound quality, more consistent service, and answerable by anyone at home. However, I have been getting 20+ spam calls a day for the last week and I am ready to get rid of the landline forever. The generational decay would be much much slower if telecoms did their job.
- makeitdouble 5y ago
  I don’t know if phone calls decay is that much a generational thing. Our elderly parents stopped calling us and moved to Line the moment they had an iPhone (then an iPad), and even with their friends they seem to just hit the call button from the messaging threads. They still say they had someone on the phone, though they’re on third party services, so it seems it kinda just switched in their mind. Perhaps the same way we were switching between local calls, long distance calls, special operator calls in the offline days, but we’d still just think of it as phoning people whatever the actual service we were using behind.

BoxOfRain 5y ago

Those social norms are changing too, ten years ago I'd have phoned people out of the blue but these days I'd only do that for urgent matters because it's rude not to text first.

LadyCailin 5y ago
I don’t even text anymore, I just ping people on Facebook or discord or wherever. And then I’m likely to call them from my computer on one of those services too, which means the mobile carrier is 100% cut out of the loop.

somehnacct3757 5y ago

I'm from the last offline generation and don't hate the telephone, but the volume of spam calls my landline receives has to be 99% of rings. I may have gone to bat for landlines if there wasn't the spam problem as I think they have upsides over cell phones. Way better sound quality, more consistent service, and answerable by anyone at home. However, I have been getting 20+ spam calls a day for the last week and I am ready to get rid of the landline forever. The generational decay would be much much slower if telecoms did their job.

makeitdouble 5y ago
I don’t know if phone calls decay is that much a generational thing. Our elderly parents stopped calling us and moved to Line the moment they had an iPhone (then an iPad), and even with their friends they seem to just hit the call button from the messaging threads. They still say they had someone on the phone, though they’re on third party services, so it seems it kinda just switched in their mind. Perhaps the same way we were switching between local calls, long distance calls, special operator calls in the offline days, but we’d still just think of it as phoning people whatever the actual service we were using behind.