30% Of Homes To Be Cellular Or VoIP-Only: Gartner

By 2010, 30 percent of homes in the U.S. will exclusively use either cellular phones or voice-over-IP, according to a report released Tuesday by market research firm Gartner.

"It only took more than 125 years but POTS (plain old telephony service) is now on the decline in the U.S.," Ken Dulaney, a Gartner vice president, said in a statement. "The emergence of VoIP and the phenomenal rise of the mobile phone now represent the 'dial tone' for the future."

The study noted that the trend is already well underway. It said that, in 2004, about 90 percent of all new telephone connections worldwide were mobile.

The prediction is one of six significant trends in the IT and telecommunications industries made by Gartner. Another trend the company pinpointed is that, in the next several years, 10 percent of companies will require employees to purchase their own notebook computers.

Gartner also predicted a 40 percent decline in the job market for IT personnel by 2010 and will require existing IT personnel to be competent in a wider variety of areas.