Phone Home, Redux

In the past two weeks, Jen and I have both replaced our mobile phones. A process too much akin to purchasing a new car or house for my comfort.

Just a few years ago, phones were still tied to a geographic location. Home, work, phone booth on the corner. Amusing to think that ‘the place where telephone conversations occur’ was tied to an actual geographic location.

Today, mobile phones and increased coverage areas have all but removed IRL geography location from cyberspace.

Without a fixed geography, virtual.

This is my second year with T-Mobile’s HotSpot @Home service. With this service, my conversations are delivered over VOIP (when I’m within a wifi network) and the duration of these VOIP conversations aren’t counted against my ‘regular’ minutes.

For a productive work-related phone conversation, I need internet access anyway, so this works perfect. Additionally, if I’m not within a wifi network, I’m probably driving or otherwise not able to talk.

But what about this next time I need to purchase a mobile phone service plan? Sometime in 2010.

I see the continued proliferation of fast, stable, open, wifi making it possible to drop traditional mobile phones in the same way more than 13% of Americans have already dropped their landline phones.

I predict the challenge of polling the 2012 Presidential election will be that 13% of Americans are “soft” phone-only.

Again returning us to a time where a specific, connected place is required for voice conversations.

Maybe, I’ll still keep a ‘regular’ mobile phone though, you know, for emergencies.