Last updated April 12, 2019
Is the old fashioned landline on the way out? The great majority of households in Canada do not appear to be quite ready to give up their home phones just yet, according to Statistics Canada, though analysts say that it is only a matter of time before the landline starts to become a thing of the past.
Statistics Canada claims that as much as 78 percent of Canadian households last year had at least one new or old cell phone, up four percent from the figure recorded just the year before. In 2008, 83 percent of all households had a landline, yet by last year that figure had fallen ominously to just 67 percent.
The phasing out of the landline is almost certainly likely to be a generational thing, with twenty-something Canadians among those most likely to not even bother having a home phone. “Having that landline for me is sort of a waste of money,” reckons 27 year old James Drummond, a resident of Ottawa, “because if people want to reach me and they want to get hold of me, it’s going to be after 10pm before I can even check (messages) half the time… Having a cell phone means people can easily access me.”
13 percent of households in Canada now have no landline at all, which may still be a small minority, but the figure has already markedly increased from just eight percent in 2008.