Are landlines (traditional home phones) on their way out?
Landlines (traditional home phones) seem to have found their way into the news recently for two different reasons. One was the recently announced increase in line rental costs and the other prophesying the death of the landline. While one doesn’t seem to be up for debate, that latter might be.
Some providers think that the rise of unified communications, VoIP and broadband herald the demise of the humble landline. According to the Ofcom, landline use was down by 3 billion minutes during the first half of the year. That’s a drop of 12.7% to Jun 2014.
As well as different technological methods of staying in touch, we also have cultural changes. Young people rarely use a landline, preferring the portability and privacy of a mobile. Apps such as Whatsapp and Facebook have taken over from conversations, while Skype provides cheap or free conversations for those with the app. We’re not communicating less, we’re just doing it in different ways.
Vodafone’s Unified Communications products allow businesses to go anywhere, do anything and always be in contact. As a Vodafone Platinum Partner, we provide these to our customers and they are proving very popular indeed!
The ability to have a landline number without having a physical landline is very convenient. It allows those who don’t trust or don’t like calling mobile numbers to contact you, it allows NGN’s (0800, 0845 numbers) to be redirected to your mobile and also allows mobile computing wherever you have a mobile signal.
In the modern business marketplace, these features are regarded as more minimum requirements and new-fangled thinking.
If you don’t need a landline to deliver your internet, it seems there is now very little need for one. They are still useful for businesses, even if only as a backup. Yet if prices continue to rise to maintain them, fewer SMBs will be able to justify the cost.
If you’re of a size that needs a dedicated internet connection or are in a cabled area, the need for a landline is steadily decreasing. The rise of the app, Unified Communications and even Skype allows businesses to do much more, with and for, much less.
If you would like to leave your old landline behind and embrace unified communications, Excalibur can help. Contact one of our advisors today to learn more!
