Have we witnessed the death of the landline?

There are many of us who do not even have a landline phone in our house. In particular, the younger generation, who are always connected and intertwined with each other through social networking sites, mobile phone apps, and text messages. Now that cell phone rates are perhaps cheaper than ever and almost everyone has a personal cell phone, landlines can be considered redundant, and rightly so. But have we lost something special along with the landline?

Now we live in a generation where things can seem more connected, as I described in the previous paragraph, but the truth is that today’s generation is so fast-paced that people rarely have time to talk. Colleagues at the office email each other when they are sitting in a separate room, families interact on social networking sites, children text their parents. However, more contact is good, right? It really has more to do with quality of contact than frequency. Much more can be conveyed in a personal phone call and are arguably much more effective communication methods than a short email or text message.

Fortunately, landlines haven’t gone the way of the dinosaurs. In fact, the situation is quite the opposite. Landlines are flourishing, especially in business, and the preferred method of contact for business meetings and idea collaboration is yet the old landline phone. It would be difficult to find a business office that did not have a landline phone at each desk to communicate with customers, use the internal intercom, and connect to conference calls. We see fewer landlines because ordinary people use them less and less. Very often they are installed in a house and rarely used because people prefer their mobile phones and the multifunctionality and ease of use.

Another advantage of landlines is the infrastructure. There are many rural areas in the UK where simple mobile phones would not receive coverage and text messages, emails and phone calls would be almost impossible. The landline network has been established for decades and it is possible to receive a clear phone call through a landline phone in the most remote locations. Security is another great advantage of using landlines. If an emergency call came through a landline, it would be very possible to determine where that call was coming from and send help immediately. This is something that is not always possible with a mobile phone.

So while landlines look dead, the truth is that they are alive and well, thriving in rural areas and businesses across the country.

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