MSE Survey Claims Most UK Adults See Little Need for Land Lines

The often confusing debate over the future of land lines has taken another twist after a new online survey of 26,182 adults revealed that 10% don’t have a “home phone” and 53% claim to never or rarely use their “land line“, even though most do still need it for broadband.

Interestingly the survey, which was conducted by MoneySavingExpert, notes that age plays an important role in all this. For example, the proportion of respondents aged under 35 who don’t have a “home phone” rises to 33% and then drops to just 2% for those aged over 65.

Similarly only 26% of those aged over 65 claim to “never or rarely use” their land line, but this rises to 57% for people aged under 35. The results are unsurprising because younger people tend to embrace mobile phones and new technologies more rapidly than the older generations.

Martin Lewis, MSE Founder, said:

“Far too many people are held hostage by telecoms companies, forced to pay for a landline that they don’t want just so they can have home broadband. Even the few providers that do ‘broadband only’ services are more expensive than the bundled deals – so many now have broadband, pay for a line, but don’t bother to plug the phone in.

This is a poor state of affairs for a country trying to lead in the information superhighway. Hopefully during these discussions with the Culture Minister, broadband companies will sit up, listen and realise it’s time people were allowed a broadband-only service, and ensure that by doing so they save money.”

At this point we need to inject a little clarification because the land line debate often gets mixed up between the voice component of a line and the physical line itself, which usually results in newspapers or politicians incorrectly claiming that home broadband subscribers could save up to £20 per month by getting rid of line rental or something along those lines.

The reality is, no matter what you do with the line rental charge (i.e. include it with the home broadband price or pay for it separately), the home broadband service itself still needs to come into your property via a physical cable of some sort (unless you go mobile, wireless or satellite) and maintaining that line will always attract a cost.

In that sense it’s perhaps more accurate to say that many people no longer need the voice component of their physical line, which doesn’t cost very much anyway. The new advertising rules should at least result in an end to ISPs pushing a separate line rental charge (Openrerach’s (BT) national UK network), yet you’ll still pay for the physical line but now the broadband price will simply become bigger to compensate.

Going forwards we expect the voice component of line rental to become increasingly optional, particularly with the move towards VoIP and SOGEA. However one way or another, the physical line is an inseparable part of traditional home broadband connectivity, be that line made of copper, coax or fibre optic.. a cost will always apply. You can get rid of it completely of course, but then there’s nothing left to deliver the broadband.