Increase in Online Ordering Bad for Phones??

Follow me on this tangent of “unique thinking.”

Yesterday Papa John’s (PZZA) aka pizza where the cheese never stays on, reported over $1 billion in online pizza sales.

“It’s pretty amazing not to hear a phone ring on a busy night,” said Freitas, an operating partner with the largest Papa John’s franchisee in the Washington, D.C., market.

The company went on to state that U.S. online sales have been growing more than 50% on average, since 2001.

Don’t think Papa John’s is alone in this milestone. Dominoes (DPZ) and Pizza Hut (YUM) are bringing in the big bucks through the bandwidth as well, but this post isn’t about horrible pizza stocks (stay away!)…

IT IS ABOUT THE PHONE COMPANIES

Every second it seems like people can do everything and anything via the internet. They can even make phone calls: Skype (EBAY). People are looking at credit card companies because of the increase in online sales: MasterCard (MA) and Visa (V).

What does it all mean?

When somebody elects to order something online, that potentially hurts a phone company: AT&T (T), Comcast (CMCSA), and Verizon (VZ). I personally don’t even have a land line.

Sure, maybe the effect is too small to harm these huge phone companies, considering many of them also offer internet services themselves; however, perhaps we want to stay away from stocks who rely heavily on telecommunications: Vonage (VG) and Vodaphone (VOD) to name a few..

At the rate we are going, telephones could one day be looked at like telegraphs…

Moreover, we can look at stocks with heavy online presence for long term: Online Resources Corporation (ORCC), Fiserv (FISV), S1 Corp (SONE), and ACI Worldwide (ACIW) come to mind.

image source – snappysnaps-maidstone.co.uk