As ever-emerging technology continues to change people’s lives, new statistics show that Norwegians are dropping even relatively modern modes of communication in favour of using social media. One thing is clear: Norwegians aren’t using their phones for calling and actually talking very much anymore.
The country already has seen a huge decline in the number of households that still have conventional phone lines wired into their homes. Increasing numbers rely only on their mobile phones, but even they’re not so apt to call friends and family for a friendly chat.
Nor, more surprisingly perhaps, are they sending text messages (SMS) as frequently as they once did. It was the SMS that started replacing the good old-fashioned phone chat. Now social media like Twitter and Facebook postings seem to be replacing SMSs.
Actual phone calling continued to grow on mobile phones every year until 2010, according to figures from the regulatory agency Post- og teletilsynet (PT) released this week. The first half of this year showed the first decline.
Meanwhile, the number of SMS text messages has also declined, while sales of mobile subscriptions with data packages have doubled.
“It’s especially interesting to see that users have gone from phone conversations to SMS text messages to new forms of communication,” PT director Torstein Olsen told news bureau NTB. Only 57 percent of telecommunications customers in Norway now have fixed phone lines, which once dominated the industry.
Views and News staff
