Cutting the Cord

Change is hard for everyone. Old habits are comfortable and moving to something different generally requires a learning curve.

Although I'm often an agent of change, I still experience feelings of stress of when I make radical leaps in technology or move to a major new workflow.

Over the past month I have eliminated my landline phone at Harvard Medical School. In these lean times, we're all looking for ways to reduce costs. The loaded cost for landlines at Harvard is $49/user/month for ISDN Centrex phones and $18/user/month for analog service. Some are downgrading from ISDN to analog. I eliminated my phone entirely.

There are several reasons for this

*Given my 24x7x365 lifestyle, asynchronous communication via email, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking applications is much more efficient than phone calls

*I receive Blackberry email every minute, but check voice mail one a month

*I'm rarely sitting at a desk

In the past, I relied on a desk phone for press interviews, webinars and conference calls. I resisted the complete transition to a mobile phone. After realizing that my fears of dropped calls, poor sound quality, and lack of speakerphone features were unfounded, I decided that a mobile only approach to phones is good enough.

Yesterday was a good example of the kind of flexibility I need. While attending a meeting in Washington from 10am to 3pm, I also had to hold a webinar for 2500 people from a hotel lobby. This required me to use a cell phone and a laptop without a wireless network. I spoke and asked the conference organizer to advance the slides. It worked flawlessly. Gaining comfort with using a mobile phone for every task has required a change in my mindset - I no longer travel to a desk just to do a conference call or webinar. Emotionally, I'm still working through the change, but technologically there are no issues.

What about cellular phone quality? In most metropolitan locations, there is no issue, but at my home in Wellesley, there is spotty coverage from all cellular providers. To address this issue, I installed a cell tower in my basement - a FemtoCell. The Verizon Network Extender uses my home FIOS connection to create an inbuilding cell presence, giving me 5 bars of service throughout my home for a one time expense of $249 and no monthly fees.

At the moment, I still have a home landline, but that may go away too. American society is moving to wireless only communications like many other parts of the world. In China, Japan and Korea wireless far exceeds wired connections purely because of the timing of their technology implementations. Wireless became available before the country was wired, so there is no real need for wired phones. Additionally, the Japanese cellular is so good that WiFi is rarely used in the country. You get broadband speeds on cell phones throughout the country.

Thus, I've cut the cord. I'm not entirely adjusted to the change, but it's the right thing to do. I'm confident that the combination of cellular phones and Femtocells to ensure a good quality signal in my home is a winner.