I think the author tries too hard to make his point. If I have a chat with someone and send thirty messages he's counting that as thirty conversations vs one phone call.

A much fairer way is to look at how many times you speak with your friends via text vs calling them. I find that I have many small text conversations but when we get together by phone it's usually a long conversation of thirty minutes or more.

I do not think the telephone call is going away. When a majority of smart phones sold only allow texting is when I will believe it. I do think that the landline phone sadly is going to become an endangered species, I will regret losing mine it's my secret weapon.