Mobile Phones: We Don’t Talk Any More

The other day a Vodafone salesperson called me to ask if she could sell me an international calling package for an extra £5 per month on top of my existing monthly plan.

The saleswoman asked if I use my mobile phone for international calls. “Yes,” I replied but added that I tend to use a Skype mobile client on my handset or Skype Out when using my PC.

Indeed, a quick comparison of Vodafone’s lowered international call charges if I signed up to its extra £5 per month charge, confirmed that for me Skype Out remains my cheapest option when calling overseas. And of course there is no simple comparison if I use a Skype mobile client on my Wi-Fi enabled smartphone to call my friends or family overseas when they are online, for absolutely no money whatsoever, barring the costs associated with my broadband connection.

International Calling

This led me to wonder what people tend to do nowadays when they go on holiday or on business trips overseas. How many of you actually use your operator’s overseas mobile partner to phone home or communicate locally? Do you use the hotel’s phone or buy a local SIM card? Or do you simply patch into a nearby hotspot and use Skype or Truphone?

This may not be so much of an issue for business users armed with a company phone, and an organisation that pays the bills, but for average users who have to pick up the tab themselves (or for conscientious employees), this raises an interesting point.

Is voice on the way out? Is it a declining revenue stream for the mobile operator, and what type of money do operators still make from voice? After all, BT and other fixed-line telcos have found over recent years that their voice related revenues have declined. Could it now be the same for mobile operators?

Voice – A Dying Form Of Communication?

I suspect operators are seeing declining returns from voice, as we increasingly use our mobile phones for other forms of “fire and forget” communication, such as email, SMS, and even things like Facebook or Twitter for short messages.

This thought has occurred to analyst Dean Bubley, who writes that voice is increasingly sidelined in favour of other modes of communication – especially if you apportion the costs in a bill fairly between different services.

While it is clear that voice still makes up a sizeable chunk of a mobile operator’s revenues, followed perhaps by SMS and data, Bubley has asked about what actually gets classified as “voice”. Does this include the payback for the handset subsidy? Does it include the ‘line rental’ i.e. the fee for having a mobile phone number plus all of its billing and account details?

Bubley postulates that maybe his £45 a month contract ought to be split down as:

• £10 – “access fee”
• £15 – subsidy repayment
• £10 – data
• £6 – SMS
• £4 – voice calls

It would be interesting to know if these ratios are close to the mark.

Conclusion

In the end voice will never go away and I am not saying it will. Texts and emails will take the place of many calls, particularly if they are long distance or international.

Once we need to communicate about anything complex or a bit long, or talk to friends or family overseas, voice still has a significant role for the foreseeable futue. But we will increasingly opt for the likes of Skype or Truphone for long distance communication.

Ask yourself this question. When was the last time you actually used up all your voice minutes on your mobile calling plan? For me it was a very long time ago.

Now, that may be because operators are increasingly generous with the voice minutes they hand out, but that in itself says one thing. The value of voice is going down.