Landline

[1] Landline service is typically provided through the outside plant of a telephone company's central office, or wire center.

The outside plant comprises tiers of cabling between distribution points in the exchange area, so that a single pair of copper wire, or an optical fiber, reaches each subscriber location, such as a home or office, at the network interface.

A subscriber's telephone connected to a landline can be hard-wired or cordless and typically refers to the operation of wireless devices or systems in fixed locations such as homes.

In 2003, the CIA World Factbook reported approximately 1.263 billion main telephone lines worldwide.

[2] A 2013 International Telecommunication Union report showed that the total number of fixed-telephone subscribers in the world was about 1.26 billion.

[3] In many parts of the world, including Africa and India, the growth in mobile phone usage has outpaced that of landlines.

However, voice over IP (VoIP) services offer an alternative to traditional landlines, allowing numbers to remain in use without being tied to a physical location, making them more adaptable to modern ways of working.

The FCC maintains both landline and Voice over IP subscriber numbers to monitor long term trends in usage.

Some predict that these metallic networks will be deemed completely out of date and replaced by more efficient broadband and fiber optic landline connections extending to rural areas and places where telecommunication was much more sparse.

[19] As of 2023,[update] Estonia and the Netherlands have retired the legacy parts of the public switched telephone network (PSTN).

VoIP services can be used anywhere an internet connection is available on many devices including Smartphones, giving great flexibility to where calls may be answered and thus facilitating remote, mobile and home working, for example.