The landline phone - once found in almost every household - is disappearing.
A Telstra spokesperson said, "As at June 30, 2023, we had 316,000 stand-alone home and business voice lines or SIOs (Services In Operation) across Australia. The figure was 376,000 as at June 30, 2022."
Last year, an Australian Communications and Media Authority report said, 18 per cent of Australians used landlines to make voice calls, down from 40 per cent in 2020.
It reported that in 2023, 97 per cent of Australians used a mobile phone for calls and 96 per cent for SMS and that as of June last year there were more than 29 million mobile phone services in operation.
The report said Australians 75 and older (58 per cent) used landlines at greater rates than others (compared with 24 per cent of adults overall) but this percentage was down from 81 per cent in 2020.
ACMA consumer experience research from 2019 found that 59 per cent of Australian households had a home fixed-line voice service.
But only 44 per cent had a home phone that they used, and 15 per cent had a home phone service connected but not in use.
Landlines can be a useful way to connect when there are network problems, disasters and emergencies, and some places, such as in some of the outer suburbs of the ACT, have variable mobile phone coverage.
But it's clear the mobile phone has become dominant.
Many people have phones as part of a digital package.
But while the number of people who use landlines is declining, it's still considerable, and not everyone is comfortable in the digital world.
This became very apparent during COVID.
The ACT Council on the Ageing started helping people people aged 50 and older with free Zoom group sessions and then one-on-one GET IT mentoring sessions.
Before moving into her current role last year, its Aged Care Volunteer Visitors Support Scheme access co-ordinator Bronwyn Kosman was one of those mentors.
Hundreds of people have been helped in these sessions, many more than once.
"Originally it was, 'I need to download the QR code' [or] how to get their vaccination certificate onto their phones ... A lot of it was really just basics about how the phone works," Ms Kosman said.
"It could be anything, from 'I was given this mobile phone by my daughter, and I don't know what to do with it,' 'I have a laptop that I want to use to write a book' to somebody who had a ring that was monitoring their health statistics... Someone else had 78,000 emails and he wanted to just work out how we could get rid of them."
COTA is helping to ensure that people who did not grow up in the digital age will be able to take full advantage of it.
There will be sessions at COTA's office (Hughes Community Centre, next to the Hughes shops, 2 Wisdom Street, Hughes, ACT on Wednesday and Friday mornings (9.30am to 12.30pm) and drop-in sessions on a rotating basis on Thursday mornings (10am to noon) at ACT library branches at Belconnen, Dickson. Tuggeranong and Kippax.
- COTA help sessions at its headquarters and in libraries resume on January 31. For inquiries and appointments call ACT COTA on 62823777 or visit cotaact.org.au or librariesact.spydus.com.
