Not much of a talker, are ya?

iPhone worship, (image from wired.com)

I received my monthly bill for my iPhone from O2, and I actually looked at it this month because it had a special notice attached to it. They were kind enough to tell me that they were no longer going to send me a paper bill each month to “save paper”. I usually choose electronic options anyway, but I like the “option” part of this and the false sense of power in having the ability to make a decision, so I felt a bit robbed to hear that I didn’t even have a choice in this anymore.

After feeling slightly diminished at having yet another physical aspect of my existence sent into cyberspace, I took a moment to read my bill. It revealed what I pretty much expected anyway, I don’t use my iPhone as an actual phone very often; I use iPhone as a mobile computer, and this is exactly why the iPad is aimed at people like me.

Out of my allocated 600 monthly minutes of phone use, I used 14. Out of my 500 monthly text messages, I used 12. That means I’m calling and talking less than 30 seconds a day on the phone, unless it’s February. We don’t have a landline either, so my talking minutes aren’t going there either. I’d like to think that I’m not an anti-social chap, friendly even to a fault in an “American” sort of way. Perhaps other people call me? I don’t even know if that would show up on my bill as minutes? It’s even more distressing if they do, it’s likely that the conversations I initiated, being fair to estimate at 50%, would now be less than 15 seconds a day. When you consider that we are billed for the entire minute of only partial use, it’s possible that I spoke only a total of 14 seconds over 14 separate one second calls on the phone last month, but was billed for the full minute in each of those cases.

It’s probably for the best that I don’t get the physical bills each month. I’d like to think of myself as environmentally friendly and I don’t really need the reminder that I’m not much of a phone-talker anyway. I can see myself leaving the world of “phones”, and switching to entirely data-based communication soon enough, my mobile phone going the way of my landline. Of course, I’ll still end up paying O2, or some other telecommunications giant for the ability to connect with a data plan, but maybe the deal like the one offered for the iPad with AT&T for a limited amount of data each month for $14.99 would be a much better route for me in the future? I feel another shift coming on, I’m not sure how it’s going to work out, but I suspect that even a year from now those 14 seconds a month when I communicate with others is going to be somehow very different.