Cell phones Now Used More for Data Than for Calls

By JENNA WORTHAM

Published: May 13, 2010

For many Americans, cell phones have become irreplaceable tools to manage their lives and stay connected to the outside world, their families and networks of friends online. But increasingly, by several measures, that does not mean talking on them very much.

For example, although almost ((15)) 90 percent ((1)) of households in the United States now have a cell phone, the growth in voice minutes used by consumers has stagnated, according to government and industry data. This is true even though more households each year are ((3)) disconnecting their landlines in favor of cell phones.

Instead of talking on their cell phones ((4)), people are making use of all the extras that iPhones, BlackBerrys and other smartphones were also designed to do — browse the Web, listen to music, watch television, play games and send e-mail and text messages.

The number of text messages sent per user increased by nearly ((16)) 50 percent nationwide last year, according to the CTIA, the wireless industry association. And for the first time in the United States, the amount of data in text, e-mail messages, streaming video, music and other services on mobile devices in 2009 surpassed ((17)) the amount of voice data in cell phone calls, industry executives and analysts say.

“Originally, talking was the only cell phone application,” said Dan Hesse, chief executive of a large American telecommunications company. “But now it’s less than half of the traffic on mobile networks ((2)).”

Of course, talking on the cell phone isn’t disappearing entirely. But figures from the CTIA show ((5)) that over the last two years, the average number of voice minutes per user in the United States has fallen. When people do talk on their phones, their conversations are shorter and the unused voice minutes mount up ((18)).

“I have thousands of rollover minutes,” said Zach Frechette, 28, editor of Good magazine in Los Angeles, who explained that he dialed only when he needed to get in touch with someone instantly, and limited those calls to 30 seconds.

Mr. Frechette said part of the reason he rarely talked on his phone was that he had an iPhone. But also, he said, most of his day was spent swapping short messages through services like Gmail, Facebook and Twitter. That way, he said, “you can respond when it’s convenient, rather than impose ((6)) your schedule on someone else.”

Others say talking on the phone is intrusive and time-consuming, while others seem to have no patience ((7)) for talking to just one person at a time.

“Even though in theory, it might take longer ((8)) to send a text than pick up the phone, it seems less disruptive than a call,” said Jefferson Adams, a 44-year-old freelance writer living in San Francisco. By texting, he said, “you can multitask between two or three conversations ((10)) at once.”

American teenagers ((11)) have been ahead of the curve for a while, turning their cell phones ((12)) into texting machines ((13)); more than half of them ((9)) send about 1,500 text messages ((14)) each month, according to a recent study by the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project.

Mrs. Colburn, from Massachusetts, said she caved to the pleading of her 12-year-old daughter Abigail for a cell phone to send text messages with her friends after she and her husband discovered it was hindering her from developing bonds ((19)) with her classmates. “We realized she was being excluded from party invitations and being in the know with her peers,” she said.

Mrs. Colburn said texting had also become a much easier way to stay in touch with her daughter and receive quick updates about after-school plans. “The other night she texted me from upstairs to ask a vocabulary question,” she said with a laugh. “But I drew the line there. I went upstairs to answer it ((20)).”

(Adapted from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/q5/14/technology/personaltech/14talk.html?ref=technology)

(Access on May $15^{th}$, 2010)

The fragment "But now it’s less than half of the traffic on mobile networks." ((2)) means that the number of Americans using cell phones to talk has been