No Ringing on Office Phones

At least not my phone. About the only calls I do receive are wrong numbers. Around 2 a week. It used to be worse, I'd get 4 or 5 a day, but they changed my extension so I stopped getting those. But in some ways it appears to be undergoing a disappearing act. [Link]

“YOU hardly ever hear the phone ring any more,” the publicity director at my publishing company said last summer. “I walk down the hall now, and it’s just so quiet.”

We were discussing the prospects for my coming book, and I thought she was warning me that business was down. But that wasn’t it. Her concern was exactly as she’d described it: the phones rarely rang. Everyone sat at desks silently reading and typing e-mail messages instead. People still had conversations, but the background din had sharply diminished.

The waning of the office phone call is one of those cultural declines that few people are likely to lament. It’s true that the changing mechanics of the telephone itself have prompted some sentimental outbursts; a page on www.wikihow.com gives step-by-step instructions for using an old rotary phone. (Step 1. Remove the handset from the cradle with your hand.)

A prominent VC, Jason Calacanis on ways to save money in a startup says not to even get a phone system for the office. [Link]

Don't buy a phone system. No one will use it. No one at Mahalo has a desk phone except the admin folks. Everyone else is on IRC, chat, and their cell phone. Everyone has a cell phone, folks would rather get calls on it, and 99% of communication is NOT on the phone. Savings? At least $500 a year per person... 50 people over three years? $75-100k