4. Disadvantages of telephones

- The person must be available to take your telephone call

- The line might be engaged when you call so you can't speak to the person when you want.

- You have to pay for every minute you spend on the call. In the case of mobile or overseas calls, that can be expensive.

- There might be noise or interference so the quality of the call could be poor.

- With mobile calls you might move out of the range of a transmitter and so the call gets cut off.

- You cannot see each other's body language so a lot of the non verbal communication is lost

- It is not easy to make a record of what is said during the call. Things might be forgotten or mis-interpreted.

- Only spoken information can be exchanged - you can't send files