Five million people never use their landline. With the rise of mobile phones, Brits are now using their landline less than ever before which is all contributing to the “terminal decline”.
Over the last few years, organisations of all sizes have been making the leap to cancel their landlines. In 2018, PwC announced that they were dispensing with landlines for all of their staff. Instead, employees and partners will be asked to make and receive all calls on mobile phones. PwC’s move is an important one and we expect many other firms to follow suit.
Some may argue that there is still a need for landlines however, many are hanging up on their fixed services for good. Research from Uswitch found that the number of households with a landline had fallen by 15% from its 2003 peak to 22 million and a quarter of those did not have a handset attached. A quarter (5 million) said they never used their landline for phone calls and a third only had one because they needed it for their broadband service. High smartphone penetration coupled with changing consumption habits mean many people use their mobiles to make calls or use alternative communication channels such as messaging apps and social media.
Many mobile tariffs from Active Digital come with inclusive or unlimited calls, making the need for a landline a redundant option. Customers also said that they had begun getting frustrated with the sheer volume of scam or sales calls to their landline. Another key factor on why customers have been cancelling their fixed services. Nearly a third (29%) of all respondents say the last person to phone them was a nuisance caller and the proportion of scam calls has increased six-fold since 2017. Nearly a quarter of people (22%) don’t pick up the landline because they expect the call to be a nuisance.
For businesses, we have seen a positive and significant increase in customers moving to a cloud-based phone system. Cloud telephony, which has replaced ISDN, is a business enabler and the smart choice. It improves productivity and collaboration at the same time as a better work/life balance for the team.
However, for those not ready to make the change yet to cloud voice; there is still time. By 2025, the old-style ISDN phone networks will be officially switched off so we would encourage you to review these changes sooner rather than later.
If you need some more information, then as cloud telephony experts, we are here to help. There are many services to consider from Active Digital including Microsoft 365 Business Voice. A modern cloud-based telephony solution that integrates into Office 365. It gives you calling together with chat and meetings in a single app, Microsoft Teams.
Call from anywhere, on any device
With Microsoft you can stay connected with a single phone number across your computer, mobile device, and desk phone. Get a consistent experience across devices with the Microsoft Teams app and Team’s devices. Make calls and join meetings with one-click.
Microsoft’s cloud provides built-in redundancy and load balancing with a 99.9% uptime guarantee. Plus, you get cloud-powered AI with voicemail transcription, inline chat translation, and real-time captioning in meetings.
See how much you can save by making the switch
Contact us to find out how much Microsoft 365 Business Voice can help you reduce costs against your current communications solutions.
