26 February, 2008 - Before Ugyen left for Lobesa, Punakha, on an official assignment, he checked to see if the email connection on his computer was working. His plan was to email his document rather than fax it.

But his plans went awry. The two public call booths in the satellite town refused to let him use their telephone line for a dial-up connection and it took him several hours before he could convince a house-owner to let him use his private fixed line.

“I ran from door to door, even visited a nearby village, looking for a phone,” the official said. “I don’t know if they were lying. But nobody seemed to have a land-line.”

Since the advent of cellular phones in Bhutan in 2003, land-line connections have been leaving homes to be replaced by the cellular.

In just a few years, mobile phones have become from being the preserve of a privileged few to a technology that is impossible to escape. Today, just about every urban family owns more than one cell phone.

A clear indication of how popular the cellular phones are can be seen from the traffic recorded by the Bhutan Telecom’s B-Mobile. On New Year’s Day and the day after (in 48 hours), 5.77 million calls were made and 375,000 short messages were exchanged, according to B-Mobile’s general manager Tandin Wangchuk.

“We started losing land line customers since 2006 and more than 1,000 land phone customers surrendered their connections in 2007 alone,” said Bhutan Telecom’s managing Director, Thinley Dorji. “But its no surprise - it’s a global trend.”

While B-Mobile subscribers are increasing by the day, Bhutan Telecom has lost 3,000 customers since Bhutan went cellular. Today, there are only 30,000 customers of land-line phones as before compared to the more than 145,000 B-Mobile subscribers as of January 2008.

If land-line connections have not fallen more drastically, it is because most government organizations and public corporations still retain their fixed lines.

Thinley Dorji predicts that land phone subscribers will decrease further as the cellular reach expands. This, according to the managing director, would mean huge costs to Bhutan Telecom. “There’ll be a time when we won’t be able to meet the cost of operation of land phone if people continue surrendering lines,” he said.

On the other hand, the reach of the subscriber base of the cellular network continues to increase as it penetrates deeper into interior Bhutan.

A random survey of about 50 residents around Changzamtog area revealed that most homes are surrendering or “planning to surrender” their land phones. “We are five in the family and everybody except my baby carries a mobile phone,” said a mother, Karma, who disconnected her phone some time ago.

“It’s expensive to have a land phone,” said another. “Why spend double expenditure when you have a very convenient gadget.” A few said that they did not disconnect because they use Internet. “If it hadn’t been for Internet, I’d have pulled the plug,” said a civil servant.

Others said that they had been sick of paying for wrong telephone bills. “You can’t remember who called whom and sometimes you end up paying for telecom’s technical glitches,” said another homemaker.

The privacy provided by mobile phones is the greatest advantage, according to the survey, even after a few people ended up in trouble because of it.

But don’t get it wrong. There are also some great advantages of land phones over mobile ones. Imagine you are on the phone, discussing an important issue and the battery runs out. “I’ll always keep my land phone because I need not recharge it,” says Samten, a civil servant. Others feel that land-line is still cheaper and more reliable even if it can’t keep up with the latest technology. “Until we have a reliable cellular network, it would be safe to keep the land phones,” said a shopkeeper.

So, if you dial a land phone and hear a musical version of Minju Yangpai Linla (a Bhutanese Boedra song), check with your local telecom office. Could be that one more land-line has pulled the plug.