After a temporary increase in Corona times, the use of landline telephones is declining again. Last year there were 80 billion call minutes in the fixed network in Germany, 13 billion fewer than in 2021, the Federal Network Agency said. In 2020 it was 104 billion minutes. At that time, the pandemic and its restrictions ensured that people were at home a lot and picked up the phone more than before.
This corona-related landline renaissance was short-lived, however, as the figures show. Interest in landline phones has been declining for a long time because many people are increasingly talking to each other or just chatting via online services such as Whatsapp or Signal. Another factor in the declining demand is that many mobile phone calls are no longer billed per minute, but are paid as a monthly flat rate – so it is not more expensive to use a cell phone than a landline phone. In 2022, all mobile phone calls in Germany lasted a total of 159 billion minutes, i.e. twice as many minutes as for landline calls. According to the Federal Network Agency, it was 126 minutes per month per active SIM card.