So what is the chatter about landlines and why do we still have them when nearly everyone now has a mobile phone?

Between 2012 and 2017, time spent on landline calls plummeted from 103 billion minutes to 54 billion minutes and over the same period, mobile calls rose to 148.6 billion minutes.

In the last year research shows that 40% of homeowners no longer have a phone installed.

In 2000 90% of homes had landlines.  Now this is at 80%.  Many used to plug a phone in as it was cheaper for calls but now with more competitive mobile packages, this is no longer the case.

So the question has to be – why do we still need them?

• If your home has patchy mobile coverage 
• It provides security in an emergency with reliable communications to services
• Superior sound quality and clarity
• Works even in a power outage
• No dropped calls 
• Can’t be hacked
• No availability of full fibre to the Premises (FTTP) for broadband.  

No availability of FTTP and what does that mean?

If you are trying to get broadband without a phone line it is important to get the right type of broadband as many are only available with an active telephone line and it is also dependent on where you are.

There are 5 ways currently to get broadband in the UK:

Landline required (with its service charges):

1. Standard copper ADSL – delivered via Openreach’s network of copper telephone wires.  Available to 99% of homes.  ADSL broadband is delivered via a phone line and therefore you will HAVE to have a landline installed to access internet even if you don’t plug a phone in
2. Fibre To the Cabinet – Land line required as from the cabinet the same copper infrastructure will be used

Landline NOT required:

1. Virgin Media’s cable network 
2. 4g or 5G mobile broadband
3. Full fibre to your home (FTTP)

Just because you CURRENTLY only have option 1 or 2 available, it doesn’t mean that is the only option – it may even work out cheaper to have fibre installed if available in your area.  A post code check will give you the most up to date availability.  Currently there is only 18% of fibre to the home available and 50% of the country has the Virgin Media option available to them. 

By 2025 BT plan to make copper a thing of the passed when they migrate uses over to Internet Protocol (IP) from Public Switched telephone Network (PSTN)

So maybe not quite time  for the fixed telephone to be relegated to recycling heap but its days are numbered