Relish Study Finds 60% of UK People Only Take Line Rental for Broadband

A new OnePoll survey of 2,000 UK adults from broadband ISP Relish Wireless, which operates a superfast fixed wireless 4G network in Swindon and central London, has found that 18% of respondents don’t even know their home phone number and 60% only take a land line to get broadband.

Apparently 36% of respondents only use their land line once a month or less and if it rings then 33% will “assume it to be an automated or sales call“, while 22% simply wouldn’t even bother picking up the phone.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) recently moved to improve the transparency of broadband pricing by forcing related ISPs to include the cost of line rental into their monthly prices, yet 60% wish they could get rid of their landline completely (a 20% increase since 2014) and 22% expect to be land line-free within two years (the real-world shift is unlikely to be that dramatic).

Bridget Lorimer, Relish’s Head of Brand and Marketing, said:

“Our results have found that millions of consumers are paying for a service that they just aren’t using, exemplified by the fact they can’t even recall their own number! Despite this however, they are still being charged for monthly line rental on top of the cost of their broadband by internet service providers. It is ridiculous to think that today anyone would be paying for a service they don’t use, and it is clear the British public are desperate to say goodbye to the landline.”

In fairness it’s not entirely correct to say that “millions of consumers are paying for a service that they just aren’t using” because for many people you’re still using it for broadband, even though the voice calls side is no longer as important as it once was (the voice component is only a small part of the overall cost).

Going forward we are anticipating a much more dramatic shift in the market, with future solutions like Single Order Generic Ethernet Access (SOGEA) making it possible to order a FTTC / G.fast style broadband service without any voice component. However SOGEA won’t begin its commercial roll-out until 2018.

Eventually VoIP is expected to become the primary way of conducting calls over a broadband line. Not forgetting that improvements in 4G and future 5G mobile will also eat into the existing fixed line market, albeit only slowly as for now you can often still get a better and more flexible (usage allowances etc.) fixed line broadband service.