Last of the landlines
Statistics Canada reports that by 2021, nearly 94 per cent of Canadian households had at least one cellphone.
Despite the rise of mobile phones, some Canadians continue to value their landlines.
For nerds, the first smartphone was 1994’s IBM Simon, which cost a lot, the battery only lasted one hour and it was off the market after six months. Then in 2007, Apple introduced the iPhone and the world of telephony was forever changed. By 2021, according to Statistics Canada, 93.9 per cent of Canadian households had a mobile phone. iPhones led the charge in the adoption of the smartphone technology, but still they only own about a fifth of the global market.
Canadians soon started bailing on their original landlines. In 2017, about two-thirds of us had landlines. But by 2021, it was down to less than half of us. Older adults are the major holdouts. By 2023, one-third of older adults had cut the cord, whereas folks under 30 were almost 85 per cent wireless.
Federal Retirees member Stan Gray of Halifax retired from the Navy 24 years ago and felt at sea in his decision to abandon the old ways.
“I kept a home phone for years because it was cheaper for the cable internet phone bundle,” Gray says. “The cable company said that if I give up the home phone, my cable bill would go up. Sounds like math in reverse, but that is what I was told.”
But when he moved house, he changed cable suppliers and happily severed that cord.
Cellphone rates are getting cheaper. On an annual average basis, consumer prices fell 16.7 per cent from 2023 to 2024, while inflation went up 2.4 per cent over the same period. But it’s not as though everyone can easily cut the cord. If you live in the North or in some rural areas, cellphone coverage is unavailable or spotty. But if you want a landline, CRTC spokesperson Mirabella Salem says government mandate demands that traditional phone carriers “provide reliable landline service to anyone in their territory who requests it.”
Karen Christopher of Embrun, Ont., had a BlackBerry until she had to give it back upon retiring from Service Canada in 2009. Now she only has a landline, which costs about the same as the cellphones she pays for her son and his partner.
“I live rural, relatively rural,” Christopher says. “And when the power went out, the landline still worked, until Fibe [Bell’s fibre optic service] came.” When they switched to Fibe, she lost the copper line and her ability to make calls during a blackout.
Phone lines used to be networks of copper wires until providers wanted to include TV and internet on the feed. The telephone companies began running glass fibre optic cables beside the old copper lines, and then cutting the copper wire just outside customers’ houses, mostly leaving them dead and unused.
University of Ottawa electrical engineering professor Claude D’Amours says conventional copper lines are powered by the telephone system, not your home’s hydro power. So, in a blackout, the telephone system often keeps running for a while through electrical sources, which can include localized generators. Phones running through fibre optics use VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol), which needs a powered modem to access it.
“If the power to that modem goes out, you wouldn’t have a connection,” D’Amours says.
But if you have an electricity source, such as a generator or a power bank, you can power the modem and your landline will connect during a blackout. If your cordless phone needs power to talk, you need to power that, too. Old rotary dial or push-button phones don’t need extra power to function.
D’Amours adds that during blackouts cellphones will continue to work if they’re charged, but if the outage is long, access to the lines will fade as their power supplies die.
Karen Christopher, who is a Federal Retirees member, says she does get some scammers — grandparent scams and CRA fakers — calling her landline, but blocking their numbers lessened the frequency. Another way to tame those telephone charlatans is by registering your number on the Do Not Call List. Salem of the CRTC says the numbers are added instantaneously when you register and Canadian telemarketers must download an updated list that is no more than 30 days old.
While the trend on landline ownership is clearly dropping, there are some folks who are still signing up to get a new landline. There’s a subset of parents who get a landline to keep their kids from getting a cellphone, according to Koeun Choi, an associate professor in the department of human development and family science at Virginia Tech, who studies children’s cognitive development in the context of technology.
“They are increasingly thinking about the old technology that doesn’t bring the baggage of all the other potential features like social media or other online video,” Choi says.
Federal Retirees member Blaine K. Dodds of Regina had a landline and disconnected it to save money. Now he wants it back. Dodds retired in 2007 from his job as a Canada Revenue Agency inquiries clerk who took about 200 calls a day. He wants his landline back because cellphones can’t be listed on the online directory 411.ca and he’d like for people to be able to reach him if they are looking for him. 411 cites privacy reasons for why it won’t list mobile phone numbers.
“That’s totally silly,” Dodds says.
Mick Gzowski is a writer and filmmaker based in Aylmer, Que. He still has a landline. Rogers Red Wireless is a preferred partner of Federal Retirees and offers discounts to members for mobile services.
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