Times Are Tough For The Phone Company
Listening to the radio while cruising around this evening, I heard a fascinating ad from my old employer Qwest. Rather than trying to get me to buy a bundle (Custom Choice!), they were trying to get me to sign up for telephone assistance. A decade ago I would have been ridiculed had the words “telephone assistance” ever crossed my lips. We were all about selling packages and cell phones. I can remember one of my co-workers shipping four cell phones to a lady in a nursing home with the promise of free long distance. Nice, huh?
The worm has definitely turned in telecom. The days of the second and third home line are long gone. Families with teenagers no longer get a second line. Home Internet users have migrated away from dial-up modems in favor of cable or DSL. And the younger generation is forgoing hard lines altogether in favor of cellies. So that leaves the low-income folks who can’t afford cell phones and senior citizens as their prime market for home phone service. Gone are the days of the $100/month target customer. Now they consider themselves lucky to retain a $20/month POTS line. Fascinating.
