Fewer and fewer customers are subscribing for landline connections in Finland. Five years ago, a couple of million such connections were active, but now only about a million remain. Half of those subscriptions come from businesses, while the other half is maintained by individual consumers.
Operators vary in their predictions as to when the landline phone will become extinct.
“It’ll take a few years. Let’s say from five years and up,” assesses Head of Communications Tatu Tuominen at Sonera, one of Finland’s telecommunications operators.
Landline subscriptions of the largest operator Elisa go down by about 15 percent each year, and Sonera is forecasting about the same rate. Meanwhile Finnet, an association of local phone companies, expects traditional phone subscriptions to disappear in ten years’ time.
From copper wires to optical fibre
With the drop in customer numbers, maintaining the old wire network is no longer worthwhile for operators. Copper wires will be replaced by wireless or optical fibre connections. Calls will go through the same routes as all other telecommunications.
Customers may, if they wish, stick to a kind of a landline phone, in which the sound will travel through the GSM network or through internet connections.
“For example, we have on offer a device that looks like a landline phone and operates on the GSM network through a GSM antenna installed on the roof,” Tuominen says.
Operators will be able to price internet- and GSM-based calls lower than calls passing through the metal wire network. However, it is getting increasingly difficult to make money on calls at all, since it is nowadays possible to make calls on the internet for free.
