A hundred years ago, one landline phone in someone's house was cause for celebration. How times change. To be sure, broadband deployment is far from ubiquitous. More Families Cut Phone Wires Not only are wireless phones becoming more of a fixture in the American family, they are proliferating within the family-40 percent of families who own a wireless phone own at least one more. Thirty-nine percent of U.S. households own a wireless phone.
Children use the phones for both personal calls and as a safety device for emergency situations.
We have seen a dramatic improvement in the quality of streamed audio on the Internet, and consumers are taking advantage. News of a proposed union between the three largest makers of personal computers and the nation's largest local telephone companies rocked the online world in February. The merger is expected to enable consumers to receive Internet data via regular telephone lines at speeds much higher than currently possible. While a complete cure for what ails the Tele-communications Act of 1996 was not discovered, all the participants in a panel held at the recent EIA Board of Governors meeting agreed that technology ultimately will provide the solutions needed to bring consumers choice in services, lower prices and advanced products. The household penetration of wireless telephones in the U.S. has reached 39 percent-substantial numbers for a market that not too long ago was perceived as a power tool for the business world.