Before mobile phones, we didn’t even call them landlines… They were just, phones. Phones with a curly wire coming out of them plugged into a wall. What once was a luxury with people queueing up on waiting lists to install one (and there are some 50,000 people in India still on that list), is gradually becoming obsolete.
New Zealand follows the trend of switching to internet telephony, with first, Spark, preparing to scalp landline technology earlier this year, then Vodafone recently announcing it will start migrating its customers to broadband phones by the end of 2017. The tendency is for companies to go completely landline-free in the coming years, replacing the 1876 landline technology as innovations have leapt forward tremendously.
Spark has started phasing out the public switched telephone network (PSTN). The plan is to shut it down within the next five years and replace it with an internet-based phone system. In the digital world, it will simply allow people to achieve more with their phones. Vodafone has decided not to wait for Spark’s PSTN shutdown by 2022 and is currently starting to migrate customers to broadband phones.
The landline might disappear one day, but it hasn’t gone quite yet. Sure, in today’s fast-paced digital era of Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter, people prefer to communicate in text, voice and video calls. However, people still have the option to opt-out of switching to internet telephony, especially the older generation.
After all, despite the numerous advantages of innovative internet phones, the biggest drawback is that you must rely solely on your modem and electricity altogether. But who hasn’t got their household connected to the internet, and online 24/7 in 2017? Sooner or later, we’d just have to embrace new technologies and live hand in hand with innovation.
If you still want a landline in your home we have plenty of broadband plans with home telephone options available. Click here to compare landline phone internet providers now.
