Nebraskans dropping land lines in favor of cell phones

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By NANCY HICKS / Lincoln Journal Star

Years ago, Stephanie and Billy Davis had one phone number for their family of four. The phone rang inside their house.

Today, the family of four has four cell phones, four phone numbers and no land line.  

Stephanie Davis was the first to get a cell phone a few years ago, so her boys could get ahold of her at all times — no matter which of her three jobs she was working.     

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The Davis family, Billy Ray (from left), Darian, James and Stephanie, is an all cell phone family. The land line was removed about four years ago. (Robert Becker)

The Davis family, Billy Ray (from left), Darian, James and Stephanie, is an all cell phone family. The land line was removed about four years ago. (Robert Becker)

She added a second cell when son James was a freshman in high school, so she could track him down.

Two years later, when son Darian joined the ranks of active high school students, she added a third cell.   

After that, she said, the home phone seldom rang.

“I thought, ‘This is ridiculous.  Nobody calls the land line,’” she said. “Once in awhile my dad would call, but that was it.”  

So she added a fourth cell for her husband and canceled the land line.  

The cell phone, once the domain of young adults and busy businesspeople, has become mainstream, as common as gloves in December.

The Nebraska Public Service Commission’s  annual report details the march into the land of wireless phones.

The number of cell phone has climbed by more than half a million since 1999 as Nebraskans have discovered the convenience of carrying their phones in pocket and purses. By the end of July, Nebraska had 1,119,806 cell phone numbers in use.

The number of land lines is slowly slipping, dropping by more than 200,000 in the past six years, to 936,745 by the end of 2006.

That’s likely the result of Nebraskans abandoning their home phones in favor of cells.  

And it’s not just college students and 20-something professionals who have shut off the land line.     

Sandy Mix got a cell three or four years ago and couldn’t afford to pay two phone bills, so she picked mobility.  

“Why, it goes everywhere with me,” she said.   

 Mix prefers the clearer sound of a land line phone, and losing a cell phone call at the bottom of a hill is frustrating. But now she can talk to friends in Lincoln while she’s visiting grandbabies in western Nebraska.  

In the past seven months,  Nebraskans have added another 77,000  cell phones numbers, based on monthly reports to the Public Service Commission.

PSC Communications Director Gene Hand has a private theory about these new cell phone users.

He thinks they’re kids.

And, he believes, parents are adding more children and younger children to their plans.

People like the Davises, who once had one phone line and one phone number per household, now you have three or four or five, he said.

Stephanie Davis said her brother’s family recently went all cell phone. And more patients at the medical office where she works have switched from land line to all cells as well, she said.

She’s even learning text message shorthand — idk for I don’t know, for example.

And she’s making up her own shorthand — “gbh, for get your butt home.”

Hand said cell phone coverage is getting better as companies add towers in low population areas with the help of money from a federal universal service fund, he said.  

New towers have gone up in  Winnebago, Oakland, Ponca, Ainsworth, Red Cloud, Nelson, Cambridge, Imperial, Sidney and Plainview.     

Although the PSC cannot regulate cell phone companies, it continues to take customer complaints and to work with cell phone companies to voluntarily resolve them, Hand said.

Last year, staff took about 350  cell phone complaints, dominated by billing and service issues.

People complained about dropped calls, phones that don’t work in the house, parts of town where the calls  fade,

They complain they can’t get out of a contract or they’re being charged for services they didn’t want, said Pam Karstensen, who handles complaints for the PSC.  

And text message complaints are growing, primarily because people don’t understand the service or their contract, she said.

Meanwhile, wireless phones keep getting smaller and more powerful.

Lobbyist Walt Radcliffe had one of the originals in the late 1980s — a bulky piece of equipment with  a phone the size of a brick and separate, 8-inch-long batteries.  

He once held the bulky phone up to a speaker in the Capitol Rotunda so an East Coast client could hear senators debate and vote on a bill.     

Today, the client could watch the Nebraska Legislature in action by computer, and in the future, he likely will be able to watch it on a cell phone.  

Younger lobbyists at Radcliffe’s firm  use their razor-thin cell to  send  and retrieve e-mail, log onto the Internet.  

“For me personally, there isn’t any tool that has changed the way I do business more than the cell phone,” Radcliffe said. “I can be reached any time, any place.”

The cell makes it easier for Stephanie Davis to keep track of her family, too.

Even if a son is in class when Mom texts him, he can answer at a break, she said.

In fact, the cell phone has created a new parental rule: “I call. You answer.”

Reach Nancy Hicks at 473-7250 or nhicks@journalstar.com