Landline telephones are becoming increasingly unimportant | Heise Online

“I’ll call the landline” – such sentences used to be common as one wanted to avoid the costly connection of a cell phone. But that was a long time ago. A survey by the comparison portal Verivox showed that the landline telephone is becoming increasingly less important. According to it, only 16.1 percent of users of a fixed telephone connection at home pick up the receiver every day. This was 2.6 percentage points less than in the same survey a year ago.

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Other respondents did not call every day, but called at least several times a week or picked up the phone several times a month. Of the 1,030 respondents between the ages of 18 and 79, 30 percent said they no longer use landline telephones. Landlines are especially important for older people, according to the survey.

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The loss of importance is also reflected in the fact that one in five respondents with a landline connection in the survey did not even remember their telephone number. The development shown in the survey corresponds to a survey by the Federal Network Agency, according to which 20 percent fewer call minutes were used on landline telephones in Germany last year compared to 2022.

The reason for this development is clear: landline telephony is declining because more and more people are calling home on their cell phones. Marc Albers, head of private customers at Vodafone Germany, says the same thing – and adds that voice telephony is increasingly being included in mobile phone tariffs at no additional cost and that mobile signals are reaching homes faster due to advanced mobile phone extensions. After all, calls are being made more and more often via data services such as WhatsApp.

Just on Friday, the Federal Council discussed another means of communication that has become increasingly less important in recent years: letters. The constitutional body approved a reform of the outdated postal law, which was last fundamentally revised in 1997. Among other things, the next-day delivery requirement will no longer apply from 2025.

(Private)