SAGA VOICES
Each month our insight team conducts an in-depth poll of Saga customers to find out what you’re thinking. This month: your landline
Is your landline phone one of life’s daily essentials, or do you use it so rarely that when it rings you have to scrabble around under piles of ironing, old crosswords and shopping lists to unearth the handset (only to discover it’s an automated sales call)?
Saga customers are split between these two extremes, according to our poll of 4,333: 40% use their landline regularly, whereas 34% rarely or never use it. Unsurprisingly, it depends quite markedly on age. Respondents over 80 are the biggest fans: 18% say they use their landline all the time and would be lost without it, compared with only 9% of people in their 70s, 4% in their 60s and 2% in their 50s. And 47% of people in their 80s would usually reach for it before their mobile, versus 13% of fiftysomethings. Around 60% of those in their 50s and 49% of those in their 60s rarely or never use their landline.
You’ve probably heard the way our landlines work is changing: the analogue copper-wire system is being retired and will be switched off entirely by the end of next year, replaced by a digital system (Digital Voice), where handsets are plugged into the internet router. Four in five of you are aware of this, according to our survey.
The switchover is already under way in the East Midlands, Yorkshire and the Humber, Northern Ireland, the North West and London. This month it will start in the West Midlands, followed by the South East in March, and Wales and East Anglia in the spring. In the summer, it’s the North East, Scotland and South West.
71% have their mobile within reach at all times
16% say their home mobile reception is poor
68% are in a WhatsApp group
48% in their 70s are in two or more WhatsApp groups
Not everyone is happy: a petition opposing the upgrade has gathered more than 121,500 signatures since July. Campaigners point out that digital phones don’t work if there’s a power cut – and what happens if you don’t have a mobile phone as back-up or can’t get a decent signal? (12% of Saga customers say their mobile reception is so poor they use a landline for calls.) And what about those without internet access? Ofcom estimates 18% of the over-65s fall into this group.
‘We’ve had people coming to us worried they will lose their phone, and concerned what will happen if they don’t have the internet,’ says Sally West, policy manager at Age UK. She urges people not to panic. Telecoms
