Milly, the cashier at my Chrysler dealer, in an endearing way gives everyone a hard time. On my last visit I got my share of hell. Then the conversation turned to my PDA and what I pay in monthly charges. And she proceeded to lecture me (and not in an endearing tone) even more for being extravagant. Poor, cheap moi?
Anecdotally, I am hearing a number of families complain about their phone bills, especially those of their teenage kids. As I wrote in early 2006, the Thermostat (broadly covering utilities like electricity, gas, water etc) takes less out of family budgets that the Telephone (broadly covering mobile, land line, cable, VoIP etc). It has worsened since even though fuel costs spiked this year. Businesses today spend more than telecoms than all other tech spend put together - hardware, software, services.
While I have read analysis about how the credit crunch will affect the capital intensive telecom industry, have not read much about how weakened consumer and corporate budgets will crimp telecom demand.
I think it will be significant - because the telecom industry has grown addicted to a dazzling number of fragmented services and charges. Push comes to shove, though, many buyers are going to say many of those components are not necessities, but nice-to-haves. Lots of Milly's out there to remind them of it.
