Budapest, October 1, 2003

Péter György aesthetician, Kristóf Nyíri philosopher and László Tóth head of the Market Analysis Division of the Ministry of IT and Communications, examined the present and future of the telecom market from multiple aspects. The three experts sought the criteria of long-term coexistence of the fixed and mobile telephone.

In the opinion of László Tóth the proliferation of television did not mean the end of the cinema, as digital technology has not replaced printed books, either. The fixed line will not disappear, just it will take a while for it to find its place and cope with the challenges of mobile telephone. Stagnation of the number of subscribers also follows the international trends.

The results of an extensive market survey conducted by Sonda Ipsos on the telecommunications market do not confirm the loss of function of the fixed line telephone, either. While 78% of mobile users think that SMS can substitute mobile calls to some extent, only 41% of them think that fixed line calls can be replaced by SMS. However, 44% of them think that text messages cannot substitute fixed line calls at all.

Without aiming to question the mobile success stories, Kristóf Nyíri admitted that if a telephone is assigned to a person rather than a place, it has a psychologically distracting effect, due to which we have to reset the reality of the space coordinates. We never know where the called party is at the time and under what conditions. When making fixed line calls we do not have to face any disturbing aspect of the communications. It ensures a calm and comforting atmosphere. The diverse psychological and anthropological aspects of using the tools of communications and the change of roles are underlined by the fact that while earlier we used to keep our mobile phone number secret, currently we consider our home fixed line number as a really confidential information .

Péter György also drew attention to the practical benefits and disadvantages that are beyond intimacy. As an example he mentioned the black-out in New York in August, that clearly brought the triumph of fixed line telephone. Computers operated at 110 V were paralyzed and with that the mobile communications as well.. At the same time, lots of people were queuing up outside the telephone booths of the dark city.
Another practical argument for fixed line telephone is Internet access that can be provided via the fixed line telephone. This is the reason why many people consider the Internet as the "lifebelt" of fixed line communications.

As the survey of Sonda Ipsos suggests, the Internet not only plays the role of a lifebelt for stagnating fixed line usage; the statistics show that 81% of households having an Internet access connect to the web through a traditional wireline telephone, ISDN connection, which is still a fixed line access, comes second (14%), followed by cable television (12%) and ADSL and mobile with 7% each.