Friday, August 28, 2009

Will cellular phone numbers become obsolete soon?

Last May, I attended Cherry Mobile's launch of its dual SIM phone series. Having 4 active mobile numbers can be a drag and may sometimes end up neglecting some of them. It will be convenient to just have them in one phone and just switch when necessary.

Also found out that my monthly mobile phone plan can be renewed or downgraded by January 2010. Now I'm partly torned as there are developments in the market that are affecting my plans on this.

Landline numbers are now mobile or wireless, can text, and surf the Internet too

With the kind of business I'm in, it will be convenient if people can reach me through mobile landline numbers especially now that they can be taken anywhere in the country and be able to receive the call.

I remember being surprised receiving a text message and the number that I replied to was actually a landline.

Some can even be plugged to your PC and you can already start surfing the Internet. So come October, I will likely have a mobile landline number of my own that I can take anywhere.

What will happen to mobile phone numbers?
I think the local telecommunication companies have already saturated the market. When you have 70 million mobile phone users (Philippines 2009), their needs for upgrade and changing of mobile numbers won't be that much right?

Therefore the whole new untapped market will be the wireless landline numbers where some can also be used with mobile phone handsets. If you can do almost everything that you are doing now with your mobile phone at your wireless landline phone (except international roaming - at least for now), then what is the use of having to maintain an expensive mobile phone subscription plan in the long run?

I think it is possible that a lot of us in business will have one regular cellphone and wireless landline number inevitably. This may decrease the size of the cellphone market as it will become more practical to have a wireless landline number as features get further beefed up. Unless of course, cellular phone subscription plans gets a radical make-over.