We live in an age of constant connectivity through the smartphones which an ever increasing proportion sector of the population carry around in their pockets. At home most younger people continue to use their mobile as their primary phone, but a phone line is still needed for people to be able to get broadband. But is having a phone connected to that phone line still useful?
For calling within the UK, if you’re on a contract then these are essentially free on a mobile phone. And if you are calling abroad, then it is hard to beat Skype to Skype calling for price. BT continues to push their ad campaigns that a home phone is the way to have long conversations with family and loved ones, but they seem to have little effect on halting the slide towards using a mobile for all calls.
So why have a home phone? Well there are plenty of homes around the country where mobile reception is poor and a home phone is needed to stay in communication. Even when you have a mobile phone signal, the connections are often worse than landlines with decent Gigaset cordless phones. Most importantly though, having a home phone is a way for someone to call up “just for a chat”, because by answering it they know you are at home already.
[Photograph by Andrew Bowden]