The growth of mobile phones in recent years has been phenomenal. There are now nearly as many mobile phones as there are people on the planet. 1 in 3 adults owns a smartphone, the app market is exploding and augmented reality promises a world of new opportunities. In light of all this, it’s only natural to question whether the landline is still a relevant tool, or whether it is simply out-dated technology that serves no purpose in today’s tech-fuelled economy.
Of course, it would be foolish to ignore the speed at which the mobile revolution has taken place, and its breath-taking levels of market penetration, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the landline is obsolete.
Many businesses find that, whilst they want all their employees to be equipped with state-of-the-art smartphones that allow them to view documents on the train and so on, they still base their communications infrastructure around landline technology.
Are they just clinging to tradition, or is the landline still able to outperform mobiles in some respects?
For most businesses, there are 3 main areas in which landlines perform better than mobiles: security, reliability and flexibility. Landlines are more secure because they are virtually impossible to hack. They are more reliable because they are hard wired (not connected wirelessly to the nearest antenna). They are more flexible because they can be setup in whichever way a businesses requires, and don’t run on complicated firmware.
The fact is that business phone lines remain a vital element of the corporate infrastructure for nearly all companies, regardless of their size, or the industry in which they operate.