29th September 2026
The Last Landline Users Could End Up Paying More as Britain Goes Digital
For generations, having a telephone in the home was regarded as almost as essential as having electricity or running water.
That is changing rapidly. Britain is moving towards a world where the traditional landline is disappearing, replaced by digital telephone services delivered through broadband. And there is an interesting question for the people who continue to use a home phone: could they eventually end up paying more precisely because fewer people are using one?
There is already evidence that this is beginning to happen.
Ofcom says the old Public Switched Telephone Network, or PSTN, is being retired because the ageing network is becoming increasingly unreliable and expensive to maintain. Calls are instead being moved to digital technology, generally Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP.
The change is happening quickly.
Ofcom's latest figures show that in July 2025 there were around 17.2 million residential landlines in Britain. But only 3.2 million were still using the traditional PSTN system. Almost 10 million were already using VoIP, while another 4.2 million were using an alternative technology which effectively provides a traditional-style telephone service digitally.
During the year to July 2025, 1.9 million residential customers moved from PSTN to VoIP. More than one million households also abandoned their landline altogether and moved to broadband-only services, increasingly relying on mobile phones and online services such as WhatsApp.
The economics are straightforward. A network designed to serve millions of customers becomes increasingly expensive per customer when the number of people using it falls.
There is already a particularly clear example.
From 31 March 2026, BT increased the line rental paid by its landline-only customers by £1 a month. Ofcom points out that this is a shrinking group and that it consists largely of older customers who tend to switch provider less frequently than younger customers.
Ofcom has accepted the increase but says it will continue to monitor prices for this group. BT is also required to maintain a £10-a-month landline-only social tariff for eligible financially vulnerable customers.
That does not mean every household with a landline is about to receive a large increase.
Indeed, most people probably won't even think of themselves as having a landline any more. Their telephone service is bundled into their broadband package, and the cost of the connection is largely the cost of providing broadband rather than paying for telephone calls.
Ofcom makes this distinction quite clearly. What is traditionally called "line rental" is essentially the cost of maintaining the connection into the home, which can carry broadband, telephone and other services. Landline use has fallen dramatically, while the amount of data carried over broadband networks has increased enormously.
But there is a particular group for whom the change matters.
Older people who have deliberately retained a simple home telephone may find themselves increasingly dependent on a service used by a shrinking minority. The same may be true of some households in rural areas where mobile coverage is not always dependable.
There is another important difference between the old and new systems.
A traditional telephone line could continue working during a power cut because it carried its own electrical supply. A digital landline normally depends on electricity in the home because the telephone service runs through the broadband router.
Ofcom therefore requires providers to offer a free backup solution, such as a battery unit, to customers who depend on their landline for emergency calls and do not have a reliable mobile alternative. The backup must provide at least one hour of emergency access.
This is particularly relevant to rural Britain. Losing electricity and losing communications at the same time is a rather different proposition from simply losing the ability to make a telephone call.
The traditional network is scheduled to disappear soon. Ofcom says BT plans to retire the old Openreach network by 31 January 2027, by which point customers using it should have been moved to a digital service or another alternative.
The transition is therefore not really a choice between an old telephone and a new telephone. The old network is going.
The bigger question is what happens to the economics afterwards.
When millions of people shared the cost of maintaining a national telephone network, the cost per customer could be spread widely. As telephone use becomes something of a niche activity, those who continue to want a dedicated service may increasingly find themselves paying a larger share of the cost.
There is an irony here.
The technology is getting cheaper and more efficient, but the people who are least likely to abandon the old-fashioned home telephone could find themselves paying more for the privilege of continuing to have one.
Britain's digital revolution may therefore have an unexpected consequence: instead of everybody paying a little for a telephone service, an increasingly small group could end up paying considerably more for something that the majority barely uses.
And that raises a wider question about digital Britain.
When society moves rapidly towards new technology, we often concentrate on the benefits for the majority. But the final few percent who cannot, or simply do not want to, make the transition can face a very different economic reality.
The last landline users may eventually discover that being part of the minority comes with a price.