The mobile phone may have been slow to take off due to limited battery life and high handset costs, but technical evolution of this type of device has allowed it to become completely ubiquitous.
In the UK, people love mobiles so much that the number of active accounts is actually higher than the population itself, which means that many consumers actually have more than one handset on the go at a given time.
The rise of mobile phones has definitely caused a change in the way that people make calls and use landline connections. But to what extent has portable telephony changed the landline market and do modern cordless phones have a place in the homes of today?
Raw Statistics
According to communications industry regulator Ofcom, there are about 33 million fixed landline connections in the UK at the moment, of which almost 24 million are residential.
It also reports that as of 2012, about 15 per cent of adults live in a home without a landline telephone connection but with a mobile phone on offer to provide for their calling needs.
This suggests that a small proportion of the population have decided to get rid of their landlines altogether and instead rely solely on a mobile to let them make calls and communicate with the world.
Underlying Implications
Part of the reason that so many households still need a landline connection is that this provides a pipeline for broadband services.
76% of people have some form of broadband connectivity available to them at home, with ADSL and fibre optic packages often coming bundled with a home phone deal that costs very little cash and so is accepted whether or not the customer actually uses it.
Cordless Comeback
Part of the reason that mobiles have become so widely used is their portability, although today the uptake of smartphones has turned handsets from simple calling devices into fully fledged portable computers that facilitate web access, social network and entertainment.
Cordless phone manufacturers have had to work hard in order to keep up with modern expectations and you can even find modern handsets that run smartphone operating systems like Android so as to offer even more functionality.
However, the traditional purpose of a cordless phone remains the same and this type of device can have a number of benefits over mobiles.
Battery life is one advantage, because cordless phones can typically offer much longer talk times from a single charge than a mobile device that also has to power many other services.
Calling costs from a landline can also be lower, particularly if your package includes free minutes in off-peak periods so that you can contact other landline numbers without racking up a big bill.
Meanwhile fashionably designed home phones are available for those who want to add a bit of glam to proceedings and cordless handsets remain considerably cheaper as a product than modern smartphones.
It seems unlikely that landline calling will be completely killed off by mobile devices, as these two options are beginning to reach a point of balance.