. The gap increases from just 45 billion minutes in 1999 to 465 bil- lion minutes in 2002, an increase of 420 billion minutes. In this period of sharply declining interstate long-distance prices and rising GDP, total switched access minutes actually decline by 12 percent, from 553 billion minutes to just 486 billion minutes. Clearly, traffic is shifting to some other platform. The effect of the introduction of the nationwide wireless plans in 1998-99 on wireless-wireline substitution is evident in the sharp rise in average wireless minutes beginning in 1998. Between 1994 and 1997, the average wireless subscriber's minutes of use per month varied narrowly between 117 and 125. 19 With the introduction of lower rates and nation- wide calling plans, the average wireless usage rose to 185 minutes a month in 1999 and then to 427 minutes a month by 2002. 20 This suggests that all wireless calls, including long-distance calls, rose by more than 500 billion minutes a year. 21 The FCC reports that an estimated 26 percent of wireless minutes were attributable to interstate calls in 2002, or about 179 billion minutes in total. There are no estimates of the share of interstate minutes in wireless calling for 1999, but the FCC reports that in 2000 the share was just 16 percent.2 In all likelihood, the share was substantially lower in 1999, when the national calling plans were beginning to spread. Assuming that 11 percent of wireless minutes were interstate in 1999, they would have totaled just 19 billion. Thus interstate wireless minutes rose by about 160 billion between 1999 and 2002, or about 40 percent of the 420 billion minutes that appear to have vanished from the wireline network. The The Death of Distance and of the Long-Distance Carriers Table 6-3. Average Household Bills from Long-Distance and Wireless Carriers Dollars/year Long-distance bill Wireless bill Source: FCC, Reference Book of Rates, Price Indices, and Household Expenditures for Telephone Service (2004), table 2.6. remainder must reflect the growth of e-mail