Many Hawai'i residents making switch to wireless
By Dan Nakaso
Advertiser Staff Writer
Mai Ly Schultz cut the symbolic cord to her home telephone in the spring and put all of her faith in her cell phone to keep in contact with the rest of the world.
"It was great calling the phone company and saying, 'I really don't need you anymore,' " Schultz said.
In that moment, Schultz, a 30-year-old reservationist for Hawaiian Airlines, joined a small — perhaps growing — cult of former land-line users to go "wireless," as they say in the telecommunications industry.
At home in Kaimuki, Schultz hasn't missed being tethered to her old phone.
"It was just something waiting for me not to use," she said. "I'm never home and I didn't like paying for something I wasn't using."
More and more people are considering canceling their home telephone service because of a confluence of technologies: The five cell-phone companies that operate in the Islands offer thousands of minutes and unlimited long distance. And faster Internet service through high-speed access, such as cable and DSL systems, means home Internet users can get rid of their standard telephone service.
But for people such as Sharon Hughes, an interior designer from Kailua, the main reason was money.
Cheaper cell-phone plans meant it no longer made economic sense to have both cell phones and a land line for Hughes, her husband and children. Some months, Hughes' family would run up $250 per month just in long-distance calls to their family and friends on the East Coast.
A year ago they upped their AT&T Wireless phone service to include three cell phones and 3,500 minutes, including unlimited long-distance service. The $250 cell-phone plan is more than half of what they sometimes paid for both cell phones and long-distance charges.
"With all of the minutes we have, it's hard to go over," Hughes said. "Whereas before, I might have gone over my minutes and then come home to a huge long-distance bill. It all added up."
A study last year by the Yankee Group Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association found that residential phone customers dropped 3 percent around the country. Another 18 percent of users considered their cell phone to be their primary communications tool.
Gordon Diamond, a spokesman for AT&T, which has the largest share of the national residential telephone market, said "3 percent is a very, very small percentage of people."
But Bill Brevoort, vice president for the PCS division of Sprint's area that includes Hawai'i, believes the number of people canceling their home phones may have grown since the study — particularly in Hawai'i.
According to a year-old survey released by the Federal Communications Commission, 41 percent of Americans have a cell phone. The number went up to 44.3 percent for Hawai'i.
"Hawai'i's way ahead of the national numbers," Brevoort said. "There are a lot of people considering going wireless now because prices have gone down and minutes have gone up."
Brevoort and other wireless company officials believe people in Hawai'i will spend even more time with the latest generation of cell phones, which combine Internet, digital photos, downloadable video games and other services.
Verizon Hawai'i is one of the biggest telecommunication companies in the Islands for both wire-line and wireless services. Unlike some other companies, Verizon Hawai'i officials believe they can keep customers whatever direction they go in.
Verizon offers land-line service, long-distance, DSL, cell phones and their next generation cousins and can bundle various services for savings.
"Why substitute when you can have it all?" said spokeswoman Ann Nishida. "You'll have one bill. You'll have one check to write each month. And on top of that, you'll be saving money by having one company for multiple services."
For now, the overwhelming majority of cell-phone users still also keep their home telephones.
Some like being able to chat for hours without worrying about going over their allotted cell-phone minutes. Others don't want the extra expense of paying for high-speed cable access. Some just want to be able to reach family members at home without paying for another cell phone.
Sandy Van, a public relations consultant in the medical field, works out of her home in Kailua and needs both a home phone and separate cell phones for herself and two sons to make both home life and business work.
"Blast faxing" network media and other contacts around the country with her MCI long distance plan would be far too expensive with just a cell phone, Van said. She also wants to be able to reach her youngest son, a 7th-grader, at home if necessary. "The land line for us is like rice," Van said. "We cannot live without it."
For her three Sprint cell phones, Van pays $79.99 per month for unlimited long distance, no roaming charges and 2,500 night and weekend minutes and 500 daytime minutes. Essentially, Van and her two oldest sons each are allotted 1,000 minutes per month.
But everyone in the family still worries about going over their minutes and incurring extra charges. Her latest cell-phone bill, for instance, was $187.22.
"We try very hard not to go over, but we inevitably do," Van said. "I can always here my kids saying, 'I can only talk for a minute because if I go over they're going to charge me.' "
And cell phones don't work in all parts of the Islands, making it impossible for some people to take calls at home if they didn't have a land line.
But cell-phone companies such as AT&T Wireless are trying to bring service to more parts of Hawai'i and recently added a cell site in Lanikai, which had been all but cut off.
"It was definitely one of those spots on the island that was dead," said Lissa Guild, an AT&T Wireless spokeswoman. "The service is beautiful now."
Raelene Ifuku, a 29-year-old human resources manager for Fuji Photo, kept thinking that it was redundant and expensive to have two phones. She thought and thought and finally decided three months ago to go only with her cell phone, which costs $45 a month for a total of 5,000 minutes.
"It just made sense," Ifuku said.
Donna Helderman, a 31-year-old registered dietician for health education at Straub Clinic & Hospital, has even sensed a mood change in people since she gave up her home phone a year ago.
"At first people said, 'Are you sure you want to do that?'," Helderman said. "Now it's so common that nobody even questions it."
Reach Dan Nakaso at dnakaso@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8085.
