The Japanese are abandoning their fixed lines for mobiles, according to a government report.

For the first time, the number of minutes spent on mobile calls has overtaken the number spent on landlines. A report by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, showed that the total talk time on mobile phones in Japan was 1.899 billion hours, a 4.5 per cent  increase from the previous year. Calls made on fixed-line phones declined to a total 1.835 billion hours, 11 per cent down from fiscal 2006.

The reason for the growing number of mobile phone subscriptions is because the Japanese have been developing the idea of free call services between users of the same carrier.

Mobile phone subscriptions at the end of fiscal 2007 stood at 102.72 million, a 6.2 per cent increase on last year. The number of fixed-line phone subscriptions was 51.23 million, approximately half the figure for mobile phones, marking a 7.1 per cent drop.

One of the factors that is damaging both landline and mobile figures is the use of Voice over IP services and a boom in SMS messaging. X

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