As old phone technology is abandoned, sound quality going down the tubes

Consumer spending on cell phones has surpassed land lines for the first time, according to a story by the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- With Americans cutting the cord to their land lines, 2007 is likely to be the first calendar year in which U.S. households spend more on cell phone services, industry and government officials say.

The most recent government data show that households spent $524, on average, on cell phone bills in 2006, compared with $542 for residential and pay-phone services. By now, though, consumers almost certainly spend more on their cell phone bills, several telecom industry analysts and officials said.

''What we're finding is there's a huge move of people giving up their land line service altogether and using cell phones exclusively,'' said Allyn Hall, consumer research director for market research firm In-Stat.

As a radio producer who tapes lots of phone calls, I can tell you this is bleak news in one respect. The audio quality of cell networks stinks and I don't hear it getting any better. And it's proving increasingly difficult to get interview subjects to talk on land lines.

But the land line is not so great either because today's phone hardware produces sound that is thin, tinny and low-energy. Headsets make it worse. VoIP is generally bad, too. Internet calls have a distinct digital swish sound to them, and suffer from audio dropouts due to packet loss.

I miss the days of good-sounding, heavy, black, hard-wired phones.

Technological revolution has given the general consumer lesser quality in music and photos as well.