Fixed line phones threatened by mobiles and VoIP in Australian households

By Stan Beer
Sunday, 11 May 2008 12:25

Strategy

Many suspected it because of anecdotal evidence that often apartment renters no longer bother to connect fixed line phones. Now a new report confirms it. Nearly half of household consumers with a phone in Australia prefer to use their mobile phones as their primary means of voice communications.

According to a new report from the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), Telecommunications Today: Consumer attitudes to take-up and use, 90% of household consumers have both a fixed line phone and mobile phone. Of those households, 45% prefer to use mobiles for voice.

Following on from another ACMA report released on April 30, which showed that there are now almost 22 million active mobile phones in Australia, the latest report revealed that just 10% of households with a phone do not have a mobile phone service. The report refers to these as techno non adopters.

In addition, the ACMA report has found that traditional fixed line phone services are under pressure from sources other than mobile networks. According to ACMA, 20% of household consumers have already used a VoIP service, while awareness of Internet telephony is high, with more than 80% of households having Internet access being aware of VoIP.

The ACMA report also revealed that fixed line replacement is on the agenda of many phone users. A quarter of household consumers indicated they would consider replacing their fixed-line service with another form of communication, such as mobile phones, if the cost the of mobile phones was reduced.

Voice and SMS are still the main concerns of mobile phone users, according to the ACMA report, with data, Internet and email services taking a back seat. Even though one third of consumers own a 3G mobile phone, two thirds of those don't use the 3G capabilities of their phones.

As time marches on, the prognosis for traditional fixed line phones does not look good, with the ACMA report identifying age as a significant factor in the take-up and use of the new and emerging telecommunications services.

The full ACMA report can be found here.