Landline telephone technology to be switched off in 2025
- Published
The technology that powers landline telephones in the UK will be switched off in 2025. Landline operators in the UK will switch every home phone in the UK to an internet-based connection instead of a traditional copper-wire landline. But what is a landline phone and how do they work?
Give us a bell?! The first working telephone was invented by Alexander Graham Bell, who submitted a patent for his design in 1876. Two years later Bell made the first long distance call in the UK, in a demonstration to Queen Victoria.
Over the next hundred years, telephone wires were gradually installed across the UK allowing people to call each other. Landlines work by converting the sound of your voice into an electrical current, which runs down a copper wire into the other person's telephone, meaning they can hear you.
However, since the internet was introduced, more and more people have switched to fibre-optic cables, which Telecoms companies have said are more reliable and cheaper to run than the old copper cables. With old phones like this one, instead of hitting the button for each number, you had to put your finger in the number hole and turn the dial to the right for each number!
The big problem with landlines was if you weren't at home, you couldn't make a call and no-one could call you! Before mobile phones, phone boxes - like these - aimed to help tackle that problem.
With the announcement that landline technology will start to be shut down, telecommunication companies have said that people won't need to change their telephone device, or their number, and that the changes will take place behind the scenes. They did however say that people might need to plug their phone into their internet router to keep using it.
Once the old phone technology is completely switched off, people will not be able to make a phone call from a landline without an internet connection. For those people in the UK without internet connections, the UK's broadcast regulator Ofcom have said that people should be offered a simple internet connection for making calls only, rather than having to pay for high-speed services.