No Phones for You! Chic Businesses Are Abandoning Landlines [telecom]

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To New Yorkers, greater Mulberry Street is typically considered NoLIta, unless it's northern Chinatown, or to those old enough to remember Sinatra at the Paramount, Little Italy.

Maybe now it's time to scrap those distinctions and give it a new nickname: NoPho, for no phones.

Many phone numbers these days merely lead to automated voice mail with directions to a website. And some businesses have abandoned phones altogether.

I guess the revolution is over: the businesses which are emerging from the ashes of the telephone age are depending on web site forms and twitter and texting for the minimal amount of customer contact they choose to provide.

I get the feeling that we have placed the final nail in Theodore Vail's coffin and set it to spinning.

Bill Horne Moderator