Wisconsin's Weekend Morning News
The Future of Phone Service
Do you still have a landline? Well, guess what? More than 70% of adults live in households that exclusively use wireless phone service. And some of us do miss those landlines. So joining us is an AT&T tech expert, Chris Phillips. And Chris, is that statistic correct? That 70% of people have given up their landlines? - The stat that I have is 70% of adults and more than 80% of the children live in households that only use wireless products for voice services. - Wow, we know the advantages of having just a cell phone because obviously you can take it wherever you are. But what are some of the disadvantages? People are now finding that they have without a landline. - The younger generation never grew up with a landline. So I think that they don't understand what the advantage of ever having a landline was for back of the day. And I think as you go the middle to older generations where they actually had a landline, I think more than anything else, it was that peace of mind that you have something that's gonna work. And as AT&T and the other companies have improved the network experience that's out there, I feel like you're not gonna run into that issue as much as you would have thought in the past to actually have a landline phone. So that there's not a necessarily a disadvantage. A lot of the perceived ones that you could probably come up with is if you have businesses that still use or people that work out of their homes with fax machines or have alarms that are summed up for the housing, 'cause that's obviously a very big product that's out there. Any type of health alarms or system alarms you get set up in medical monitoring, the great news is even with the wireless network, you can still use that and run those systems so you don't have to rely on that landline phone. - I had to smile when you said a fax. Believe it or not, just a couple of weeks ago, my husband said to me, well, can we fax this? And I looked at him and said, not from a cell phone we can't, but apparently there is a technology where now you can have all of the same benefits that you had with a landline, but do it through your wireless. Explain what's happening. - Yes, that's correct. So the product that we've got is called AT&T Phone Advanced. And exactly what you're talking about, the great news about that is it's gonna be an option for customers where it'll give you a digital home phone service that works just like you're traditional. So I go in and have my phone that I have, I pick up and use, be able to use this same product just like that and it's comparable to what I currently have. And the great news is if you've got existing phone number, you can even keep that and use the actual current telephone. So you don't have to go and buy different products or services to hook up with this product that we've got that's out there right now. - How widespread is a fiber optics throughout Southwestern Wisconsin right now? - So you've got pockets all throughout Southeast Wisconsin that's gonna have fiber. I don't know the exact, I would say, of the footprint of what we have that's built out with it. And the great news is we can pull anybody's address to check to see if they qualify for it. Let's say that fiber is not available for you in your area. There could be a backup product that we have that runs off of our wireless network as well too, that would give you internet coverage. So you could either, if you're available for fiber, obviously that's gonna be the product that you'll be able to send it for. And if fiber is not available and your address does qualify for it, there could be an option for you that would run off of our network. So basically, the single tower that you've got, it's gonna run off your same data that you've got for that. So not only would you have your wireless portion of it, you've got your silicone data poured out of it and then you'd actually have an internet box that could rent your house as well too. - What is the future of telephone service, Chris? We've evolved so quickly over the last 10, 20 years. Where will it be in another 10 or 20 years? - I would tell you, I don't necessarily have the answer for that. I wish I would. I'd probably be in a higher role with AT&T if I did, but my guess would tell you that there's gonna be a wireless use for everything that we've got for us. There's gonna be ways that we need to connect more things. And the way that your data is allotted to you is probably gonna be a way that that's gonna switch a little bit from that wireless aspect to more of the data and the social aspect of it. - These fiber and the internet error opportunities that we've got out there for the consumer to be able to do, there's probably gonna be way different ways that we're gonna maximize and utilize those products and services for consumers that we're not even thinking about today. - Will you ever be able to eliminate those robo spam calls we all get? - I don't know if we'll ever be able to eliminate them all. I know that they're working on ways to make sure that we've got ways to stop as much as we can, but unfortunately the way the world works, it seems like when we get one thing figured out, there's someone ahead in somewhere else and continue to keep that going. So I feel like we will do the best that we can with technology and with the resources available to us to stay out in front of it and to minimize that as much as we can to the customer. - Chris Phillips from AT&T, great to talk with you today. Thank you so much.