Cellular News today has an interesting story on a recently released report that claims there are more mobile phones in Europe than landlines.
A new report from the European Commission has reported that more European households have mobile phones than have landlines. The report states that 80 percent of households in the EU have a mobile phone, compared to 78 percent who have a landline phone.
Of those surveyed, only 19% reported total reliance on their mobile phone.
This doesn't surprise me in the slightest, as I'm one of that 19%, and the only thing I use a landline for these days is as an ADSL connection line. The vast majority of calls (close to 100%) I receive on my landline telephone come from telemarketers – friends and family call me on my mobile.
August 30th, 2006 at 2:13 am
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September 1st, 2006 at 10:48 am
I can’t give up my mobile. I use it daily, four or five times, at least. Sometimes it is annoying, but most of the time is useful.
September 4th, 2006 at 3:02 am
Hi Tom
Good story. Part is old news as the European count of mobile SUBSCRIPTIONS has gone past fixed landline subscriptions years ago. Mobile phone subscriber penetrations went past 100% for Europe in February of this year.
This EU report looks at households. So if a family of two parents and two teenager kids has four phones, it counts as one household with mobile phone(s). That is why this household count only now grew past households of mobiles.
The most telling numbers are those for Finland, Portugal, Austria and Italy. Four very advanced markets for telecoms infrastructure, in fact Finland was the world’s most advanced fixed landline market back in the late 1990s, even ahead of Sweden. That these countries are abandoning fixded landline connections for mobile-only, between Italy’s 25% and Finland’s 47% – this is the BIG nail into the coffin of fixed landline operator business. Yes, Skype is killing them too, but this is the big one. Oh, and similar stats also appearing in Asia leading as can be expected, with South Korea.
Tomi T Ahonen
4-time bestselling author lecturing at Oxford University on 3G Mobile
blogsite http://www.communities-dominate.blogs.com
website http://www.tomiahonen.com
March 20th, 2007 at 12:00 pm
71 percent of mobile households have three or more handsets