Percentage of people who still use landline phones?

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#1332470 26-Jun-2015 23:36

Funnily enough the old people in the third world countries have no problems adapting to using a mobile phone instead of the no phone that they had in the past.

Richard rich.ms

kiwitrc

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#1332518 27-Jun-2015 05:58

Interesting comments, we have a VOIP line but only because my mother in law calls us on it. We were going to set up an 0800 number (on my wifes phone not bloody mine) but then realised there would be no peace when we were away for the weekend. She wont call our mobiles unless there is an emergency, so its kind of $10/month peace and quiet tax.

Like others have said, we hardly touch our generous VF mobile plan for calls.

SJB

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#1332562 27-Jun-2015 11:20

The view from rural NZ is vastly different from urban NZ.

There is no mobile reception where I live and I can't get satellite internet unless I cut down the mature trees around my property (the satellite is very low on the horizon). Fortunately I have line of sight to a wireless mast on a hill in the distance so I get decent internet from a Christchurch provider.

There are people around here who can't get anything except landline and are still using dial-up. It will never be economic for the telcos/ISP's to provide them with anything else.

A significant percentage of rural NZ is in the same situation, as was the UK when I lived there. Landlines will probably still be around when mobile phone technology as you know it today is long gone.

Geektastic

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#1332565 27-Jun-2015 11:45

ubergeeknz:
Geektastic:
MikeB4:
Geektastic: Interestingly I read yesterday that Telecom in the UK is seeking leave to disband the entire POTS network there.

That will eventually occur here

We abandoned ours when my father died a couple of years ago. He was the only person who ever rang us on it and my wife and I found we had so many minutes (now unlimited) on our mobiles that keeping the landline for $250/year seemed pointless.

Skype and FaceTime make keeping up with friends and family overseas a breeze and even if I call them on my mobile the charges are small beer in the scheme of things.

POTS is doomed.

As someone who is heavily involved in running voice services for a large telco... I can tell you that the demise of POTS, or at least fixed telephone service in general, is a long way off yet.

I doubt very much that Telecom UK could turn off the POTS network without replacing it with another kind of fixed telephone service.

They plan on replacing it with VOIP.

See here

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#1332566 27-Jun-2015 11:46

kiwitrc: Interesting comments, we have a VOIP line but only because my mother in law calls us on it. We were going to set up an 0800 number (on my wifes phone not bloody mine) but then realised there would be no peace when we were away for the weekend. She wont call our mobiles unless there is an emergency, so its kind of $10/month peace and quiet tax.

Like others have said, we hardly touch our generous VF mobile plan for calls.

If she won't call mobiles, surely getting rid of any other option gets you MORE peace and quiet? ;-)

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#1332567 27-Jun-2015 11:47

richms: Funnily enough the old people in the third world countries have no problems adapting to using a mobile phone instead of the no phone that they had in the past.

True but look how low the prices are in many of those countries.

In India it was tenths of a cent per minute...!

cr250bromo

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#1332570 27-Jun-2015 12:21

My mother is almost 65 and isn't so good on using her mobile much so the landline really is a lifeline for her. For people in her position a traditional POTS landline is still the best thing - high change of getting dialtone and being able to dial a number which is important for someone of her age if they need to call for help. I know people say a mobile is just as good, but when there's a a major outage, overloading or disaster those same people will be expecting 100% uptime from the mobile network...

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#1332572 27-Jun-2015 12:46

I use a landline phone at home. I don't like cellphones.

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#1332577 27-Jun-2015 13:05

If it's VOIP, but it rings like a landline, and it dials like a landline, and it sounds like a landline and the wife can't tell the difference, is it a landline?

Did Eric Clapton really think she looked wonderful...or was it after the 15th outfit she tried on and he just wanted to get to the party and get a drink?

Fred99

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#1332579 27-Jun-2015 13:12

SJB: The view from rural NZ is vastly different from urban NZ.

There is no mobile reception where I live and I can't get satellite internet unless I cut down the mature trees around my property (the satellite is very low on the horizon). Fortunately I have line of sight to a wireless mast on a hill in the distance so I get decent internet from a Christchurch provider.

There are people around here who can't get anything except landline and are still using dial-up. It will never be economic for the telcos/ISP's to provide them with anything else.

A significant percentage of rural NZ is in the same situation, as was the UK when I lived there. Landlines will probably still be around when mobile phone technology as you know it today is long gone.

A mate of mine lives in the middle of a patch of snake-infested rock and gum trees, with only fire-break 4WD road access, in inland central NSW. There was no power, no phone service or neighbour for miles. When the govt. sold off part of Telstra, there was some deal where phone connections had to be available to rural subscribers at a standard connection fee. He jumped on that, Telstra came in and spent $130,000 to build a tower on a hill next to his hermit retreat, solar powered, with phone and broadband service. This setup only services his home. Cost to him was $300.

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#1332585 27-Jun-2015 14:00

We are rural but fortunately can get wireless RBI. It would have been too much for our budget if we had kept the landline so we went for the VOIP option with a degree of trepidation since we weren't sure how it would work out. Initially there was a little (not much) trouble with 'ghost' calls and audio only working in one direction, but we haven't had any of that for a long time now. Phone works exactly like the landline did and we even still use the old-style phones. We can hardly tell the difference except it actually works much better because the copper often failed and it was always a major hassle convincing Telecom that the problem was not at our end. I am so glad to be free of that nonsense.

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ajw

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#1332651 27-Jun-2015 17:22

ubergeeknz:
Geektastic:
MikeB4:
Geektastic: Interestingly I read yesterday that Telecom in the UK is seeking leave to disband the entire POTS network there.

That will eventually occur here

We abandoned ours when my father died a couple of years ago. He was the only person who ever rang us on it and my wife and I found we had so many minutes (now unlimited) on our mobiles that keeping the landline for $250/year seemed pointless.

Skype and FaceTime make keeping up with friends and family overseas a breeze and even if I call them on my mobile the charges are small beer in the scheme of things.

POTS is doomed.

As someone who is heavily involved in running voice services for a large telco... I can tell you that the demise of POTS, or at least fixed telephone service in general, is a long way off yet.

I doubt very much that Telecom UK could turn off the POTS network without replacing it with another kind of fixed telephone service.

All fibre installs that use voice are run over a VOIP network aren't they. And orcon uses a softswitch manufactured by Siemens for VOIP don't they.

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#1332684 27-Jun-2015 18:07

Replacing the PSTN isn't quite as simple as Spark simply deploying a VoIP network (like they have now).

The NEAX's are the core of the NZ phone network. A huge % of calls not even destined for Spark have to interconnect via the NEAX's, and until the day arises that there is full IP interconnection between all VoIP providers this simply can't happen. Nobody else in the world is doing this right now, and if you go back 7-8 years ago when Telecom planned to have NZ pretty much fully migrated to VoIP by now (which would have made us one of the first countries in the world to do this) and planned the shutdown of the NEAXs by 2020 you realise how ambitious that goal was, and all the reasons why this can't actually happen any time soon. Most people don't know about the hundreds of millions Telecom (and Spark) have thrown as mass market VoIP and PSTN replacements so far.

Countries saying they're going to shut down their PSTN networks vs actually doing it are two very different things.

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#1332714 27-Jun-2015 18:59

I like POTS

We have cable plus landline (no fibre option until late 2019).
I hate cellphones, and rarely use mine (a $19 supermarket cheapie).
We have tried VoIP three times - various problems each time, including incoming calls not getting though.

POTS always works, so we'll keep it as long as we can.

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#1332746 27-Jun-2015 20:09

floydbloke: If it's VOIP, but it rings like a landline, and it dials like a landline, and it sounds like a landline and the wife can't tell the difference, is it a landline?

As I see it, yes. How it's delivered doesn't really matter.

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