By MARK PENN with E. KINNEY ZALESNE
From The Wall Street Journal Microtrends Column

I took my daughter to college this week, and as I watched her set up her off-campus apartment along with her roommates, I had to return a call. So I asked “Where’s the phone?” In response, she held up her cellphone and said, “Ah dad — here it is.” There was no landline phone, and there wouldn’t be. She looked at me like I’d asked where the VCR was.

She and her roommates were getting TV and the Internet, and between them they would have three cellphones. But while they would each have personal communications devices, her household of three adults was a microtrend that is quickly becoming a macrotrend — a phoneless home. The very idea of a “home phone” is becoming obsolete.

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