I read a disturbing quote the other day.
Perhaps the communications users of the future won’t care as much about voice at all. Younger users seem perfectly happy to Twitter, text, and instant message rather than making an old fashioned phone call.
Since I’ve invested so much of my life in striving to create a voice network, anything that makes it sound like people would need my services less is alarming. But the reality of current user behavior is that the majority of voice communication is still point to point–one person talking to one person.
However, today’s communication options include the ability for a person to carry on conversations with many people at once. Conferencing and collaborative desktop sharing are good examples. They make it possible for me to carry on two way communication with hundreds of people. I can make my voice communications more effective by combining voice with other forms of communications. For example, I rarely just lob a call into a co-worker. By using IM I can know if the person I’m about to call is available so I don’t waste time leaving a voicemail if I don’t think that is going to be effective. I am not limited to one-on-one voice communication at all. You know about email but our communication system allows you to go beyond email and text a message to thousands of mobile users to keep it separate from their emails. Did you realize that Facebook and Twitter are the new email? It’s real time communication that people seem to prefer to an interruptive phone call.
Is voice communication going away? No, not as long as people like to talk. But it is fascinating to observe how communications are changing in 2009.
