Landlines Looking To Innovate With Content And Services To Retain Customers

As mobile phones become more reliable, and as the cost of calls comes down, more and more people are opting not to have a landline — apparently 11 percent of US adults only make calls via mobiles. In a bid to fight back some telcos are adding common mobile phone features to landlines, particularly those companies like Embarq, Qwest Communications International and Windstream which don’t have a mobile division, reports the WSJ. Features being added include instant messaging and text messages: “When a text message is sent to a land-line number, the home phone rings, converts the message into audio, and plays it back. The land-line phone user can reply with an audio message or press a button to send a canned text response such as “Thank you” or “Where are you?”. Other companies are looking at sending information to land phones via a color screen, such as weather alerts, directory search and e-mail. Of course, the most obvious feature to add would be an easy-to-use contact list, which would solve the most common problem faced by people about to make a call, ie not knowing the number.

The second most obvious feature — at least for me — is ringtones, but apparently that’s not very popular. Embarq’s trial of letting home-phone owners assign different songs to different callers fell flat, “because while choosing a ringback tone “is a personal decision, a home phone is a community device” said Dennis Huber, Embarq’s senior vice president of product development”. Another service being offered is a portal camera and intercom system that can wirelessly stream video and audio from any room in the house to the phone, serving as a potential replacement for a baby monitor. It shouldn’t need to be said that simply mimicking mobile services won’t work — the biggest drawcard is often doing something when you’re away from home (TV, games, music etc). Considering the VoIP technology around today it shouldn’t be too hard to offer several different handsets to the one phone which can communicate like walkie-talkies, and even make outside calls at the same time.

Perhaps the most relevant quote comes from Embarq CEO Dan Hesse: “I think there’s a lot of opportunity to innovate around home phones,” … He says that while land-line phones haven’t changed much in the past decade, cellphones have seen a boom in innovation. “Why should cellphones have all the fun?” The issue isn’t necessarily competing with mobile phones in the content and services offered, but in getting some more innovation going in something that hasn’t changed much for a while.

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