The smartphone is making an audible difference to the world (writes Clive Thompson at Wired). He’s spotted that his mobile phone bills are dropping, and there’s one obvious cause. he’s not phoning people as much as he used to, and what calls he is making are not lasting as long. It’s all to do with the rise of social networks and smartphone connectivity, "This generation doesn’t make phone calls, because everyone is in constant, lightweight contact in so many other ways."
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Phone calls are dead not because are old-fasioned and pass�. All the present communication channels are designed by big american companies, who strongly believe that's a great way to get huge number of potencial customers. All these "revolutionary" techniques command you to constantly spend time on checking statuses, reading short, meaningless messages. Everyone tells us that this is the future. What if I don't what the future like this ? What if I want to feel human emotions ? That if I want to take the effort to spend more time on "real" discussions, spend more time with human rather than checking what they have written on their blogs/twitters/facebook. I hope that in Europe and other continents we will not follow this "modern" way that fast.
I use the voice capability on my phone for short conversations to arrange to meet people in person to have proper conversations. I don't speak for long periods on the phone.
There is no "pathological" need to continually check to see what's going in the in the messaging/social networks if you have your notifications working properly.
I'm certainly using my phone less and less as a phone. When I do, I often use telephony services other than those of my carrier, e.g. Skype. Incidentally, there will be an interesting announcement re: VoIP and a large social networking site tomorrow, which will mean ever fewer reasons to need bundled minutes.
Does my network care? I'm not sure. They're still getting their �35/month whether I use their minutes or not. Ultimately, a big fat data tariff will take care of all my mobile needs. But I reckon it'll cost, oooh, say �35/month...