Landline UK Phones Still Popular with Some Groups – 28 Percent of GEN Z Have One
A new Opinium survey of 2,000 UK adults, conducted during June 2025, has revealed that 28% of respondents aged 18-27 years old (Gen Z) still have a landline phone at home and 21% of that same group only retain it “as a decoration”. But interestingly, 43% of respondents remain unaware of the looming change to digital phones by the end of 2027.
The reality today is that most people don’t make much use of their home phone services (if they still have one), often preferring to use VoIP, mobiles or internet messaging services. At the same time, the old legacy phone networks have reached end-of-life and the market is gradually switching over to fibre optic broadband connections and digital (IP-based) landline alternatives.
The switch-off of legacy phone services is currently expected to complete on 31st January 2027, which was last year delayed from December 2025 in order to give broadband ISPs, phone, telecare providers, councils and consumers more time to adapt (details).
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The main focus of this delay was the 1.8 million UK people who use vital home telecare systems (e.g. elderly, disabled – vulnerable users), which aren’t always compatible with digital phone services because telecare providers were slow to adapt. But this overlooks that, for everybody else, many telecoms providers will still be working to the original Dec 2025 deadline to have their customers off the PSTN network.
The new survey, which was commissioned by Uswitch.com and should be taken with a pinch of salt given its small sample size, indicates that such landlines may still be quite popular with some unexpected groups, like Gen Z. But the findings are quite limited.
Additional Survey Findings
➤ 24% of Gen Z who own a landline say they use it frequently, compared to just 11% of the older Gen X (aged 44-59).
➤ Other top reasons for having a landline include speaking to family based abroad (25%), for emergencies (23%) and better call quality (23%).
➤ Gen Z don’t have the same nostalgic attachment as older generations, with just 19% able to recall their childhood phone number, compared to 50% of Gen X and 43% of Millennials.
➤ 43% of Gen Z think landlines are ‘old-fashioned’.
➤ 44% of respondents still have a landline.
➤ 11% of respondents say they prefer using a landline to a mobile phone and that a landline feels more “personal” than a mobile phone (13%).
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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Perhaps landlines (or more specifically VOIP lines) would be more popular if they were priced more in line with mobile contracts. How is it that I can get unlimited calls & texts & 5GB of data for £5 a month on my mobile but VOIP providers want more than double that for calls alone?
Big Dave, that is a curiosity that I too have been unable to quite get my head around.
Although on a slightly different note, it may be the case for many users (certainly myself and my parents) that ditching an inclusive call package and just having a PAYG-style VOIP connection would beat the traditional phone providers hands down price-wise overall, and may well come in at under £5 total per month too (particularly if you can largely avoid calling mobiles from it).
Mind you, setting up VOIP hardware out-of-the-box can be a real “faff”. A stronger word is probably more appropriate and it isn’t for the non-technically minded. Buying DECT base stations or ATAs pre-configured by the VOIP provider is what most people would need to do to get close to the plug’n’play of a traditional analogue phone.
So, 28% of people haven’t heard of WiFi calling, then?
I’d be interested to hear of people’s experience of using WiFi calling. Call sound quality using Lebara Wifi calls in my experience is pretty awful, either at the remote end (to my Lebara mobile) or the opposite way round or Lebara Wifi to Lebara Wifi. And I’m not talking about WiFi reception breakup. There’s a horrible persistent tinny reverberation in the audio. Myself and a friend (both on Lebara) have found this to the extent that we’ve both disabled it.
@bedbod, I use Wifi calling using Smarty and is fine here.
@bedbod The call quality on Wi-Fi calling should be identical to what it is via 4G/3G mobile, and be considerably better than a call over 2G. This is because everything is the same with the call, its just sent via Wi-Fi rather than a cell tower. So it is odd you are getting different results. I use Lebara and Wi-Fi calling will show HD for high definition calls and sounds really good, and no different to an HD call via 3G/4G. Has your mobile number been transferred across from another provider? If Yes it is possible your call is getting an extra journey, as in the UK your call will go to your original provider of that number, and they then call up the other network and connect the call, so you have extra things happening in-between and the call audio maybe being converted to a different codec. See the Wiki article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_number_portability
I transferred to Lebara from Vodafone, so I’m not having that extra routing as Lebara of course use Vodafone.
I’m with Lebara & WiFi calling works fine with me. My number started off at BT then went >EE>Smarty>Lebara.
@Phil: The quality of VoWiFi is entirely dependent on the quality of that Wi-Fi signal and the ISP, quality if fair to excellent, better than 3G and 2G but generally less good than VoLTE (which in turn is less good than providers’ VoIP such as Virgin Media, BT, Sky, Vodafone).
WiFi calling on Giff Gaff is great, but rarely use it, not a big WiFi fan, and for the price of VoIP phone, I pay £15 for unlimited everything on GG and VoIP calls over signal, WhatsApp etc who needs landlines other than for the older generation? I’m getting on 51 soon, 2 kids almost 7 and 10 and they don’t know what a landline is! The future is nigh, VoIP and video are the future man (smoking on a cig in 70s stoke clothes)
In how many cases is the home in question the parent’s home?
I was thinking the exact same thing
I have a ‘landline’ which is an A&A VoIP service costing £1.44 a month. I figure it’s there if my mobile ever has an issue and I need to phone the provider, and also the kids like using a physical handset instead of talking to a screen, and it looks more like the telephone they’re used to seeing in their books.
IIRC BT publishes figures at the end of 2024 reporting that the number of landlines was declining at about 12pc to 13pc per annum.
The number of landlines would seem now to be down to somewhere in the region of 5m or less.
The figure of 5m is about right for traditional PSTN connections. However for other fixed voice connections (I’m defining this solely as managed VoIP lines provided by the likes of BT, VM, Sky, etc, in the context of landlines), there are about 15–16 million connections.
@Roger_Gooner
Many thanks.
I have no idea about the scale of the VoIP sector. Have you collected the figures from the various providers or is there an independent source for the VoIP count? It would also be interesting to get a feel for the breakdown of those numbers between consumer and business.
However, my main interest is in the fixed landline services, which seem to be totalling on the high side even after the steep decline in recent years and the pending deadlines.
The projected usage levels of the Gen Z vs Gen X are the inverse of the general perceptions, with some commentators on the topic of landlines and of mobile phone adoption.
I’ll wait to see the original study and data wherever it is before making that assessment.
I find it vanishingly unlikely that generation Z would have an attachment to landlines X, having had them in the house their entire formative years, do not.
Half expect a bunch of the survey to have been done via landlines to be honest. The original survey data or at least a link to the original source article to follow to get to the data would’ve been good.
I doubt that the survey details will be made public.
The intent of these surveys is generally to highlight a specific topic and comment around, but I have no idea what that point might be and it of itself is of no interest to me.
I would think in the 18—27 age bracket, some will not have flown the nest, so are probably just saying what they have at home, ( parents home) Seems a rather big percentage for that group.
There are several providers (Sky, for example) who won’t provision a service without ‘free’ voice services, so people get a landline even if they don’t want one
@boggits: Good to have when there is no extra charge for the service, other than the broadband contract, calls best used as pay as you go, unlimited calls much to expensive, imho.
I do not know what the technical details are, but it is not a landline if the voice service is provided over VoIP.
I do question this, I don’t think this amount of people have a landline surely? We haven’t had one in probably 8 years at this point???
That depends on your mobile coverage. I don’t know anyone in the countryside near me who hasn’t got a landline, even if its only used occasionally.
There is a mix-up over the terminology. You only have a landline phone service if you take the PSTN offering. Any other broadband voice service is via VoIP from your devices. As it stands, there are still about 5mn PSTN service landline connections in service in the UK.