Why? Because of telemarketing.
I have been using my phone number since 2001. Everyday, I got a lot of phone calls. Most of it comes from fixed lines. Most of them, if not all, start with “Are you Mr. Wang? May I interrupt you for a moment. We are a company ….”. They are real estate agencies, credit card companies, securities company, etc.
I have formed a pattern recognition that all calls from fixed lines are telemarketing calls. I started to natually skip any phone calls that is from fixed line to my mobile. From time to time, I pick up some randomly to check the reliability of this rule. So far, there is no false positive.
Does it mean the death of fixed lines? When telemarketing becomes more and more mature and the do-not-call database has no song to emerge in China, my choice maybe increasingly popular.
You mean landline?
How can tell the difference?
Well we are very lucky : in my country telemarketing is prohibited on mobile phones. That doesn’t mean they cannot bother you on your fixed line when you’re having dinner, but at least in that case you can use an answering machine which will take care of that …
SPAM phone calls on my mobile is something that really bothers me when I’m in China …