The end of analogue fixed telephones?

Is it the end of the traditional fixed phone? Is it going to become as exceptionally used as the diehard fax system? 

By now and in a general manner, we’re using mobile phones more frequently than fixed land sets to make calls. At home the trend is obvious, for it is easier to make a call from wherever we may be sitting or standing, instead of moving to where the fixed set is and reaching out for it. It is not just about laziness, it is about speed and convenience.

Even at work, at our desk where the good old traditional phone is at reach, we still tend to use mobile phones more often, for a number of good reasons: the convenient contacts list and the eventual wireless earphone, to name only two of the great functionalities we have become accustomed to thanks to smartphones and that very few fixed installations come fitted with.

Regardless of what we think or feel about it, of the fact that sometimes a long, important and clear communication can only be achieved through a fixed line, there are signs here and there that a change is going to come soon. One such tangible sign regarding this matter comes directly from none else than Orange France, the giant telecommunication company that is also operating in Jordan. The company plans to start gradually discontinuing regular land phone lines by 2020 in France. This is big news, though more or less expected.

It is not only regular mobile telephony that is slowly, but surely killing fixed telephony, but the countless channels and services that use your mobile phone and the Internet, especially when you are calling abroad. Skype, Viber and WhatsApp are three of the main such services. So in a way it is actually the Internet that is directly triggering the change, although it is happening indirectly via your smartphone.

Confirming that it is indeed through the Internet that most everything happens today, Orange has made it clear that there will still be “fixed lines” to use in the workplace or at home. However, they won’t go anymore through old traditional analogue cable lines but through digital subscriptions the kind of ADSL and the like. In other words they will be Web-based. Yes, it’s the Web — again!

Many enterprises are already equipped with digital PBX (Private Branch Exchange) telephone systems for their offices. Alcatel-Lucent, Siemens, NEC, Avaya, Nortel, Cisco and Panasonic are some of the big names in the game and they all can offer equipment that is tailored for real large enterprises, as well as some that suit small companies and offices. Digital PBX paves the way for the future of web-based, fixed telephone systems.

Expect to use words like “cloud”, “IP address”, “upload/download”, “gigabytes and terabytes”, and other terminology usually reserved to computers and networks, when dealing with your future digital fixed telephone at home or at work. We can reasonably assume that the sets to come will have much in common with smartphones, except that they will be fixed and placed on a table or a desk and won’t need to be recharged. Functionality and convenience, along with large colour screens, and of course the so-important contacts list, will be part of the set-up. Let us just hope that spam messages won’t join in the game.

With traditional analogue fixed telephony going away, it will be one more major shift from analogue to digital, after music and photography.