Over Half a Million Canadians Cut Their Landline Phone Service Last Year

According to a report from the Financial Post, the most recent quarterly reports from Canada’s leading telecom companies showed that they lost over 500,000 landline phone customers last year.

If you take smaller carriers into account the number increases to about 636,000 customers. Convergence Consulting Group estimates that the numbers will drop by the same amount in 2016, which leads them to expect an increase in Canadian wireless-only households from 32.5 percent at year end 2015 to 37 percent at year end 2016.

In addition, most customers that have a landline phone already have a wireless phone, so telecom companies will not be gaining any addition subscribers. The CRTC reports that carriers made $5.2 billion off of home phone services in 2014.

It seems like consumers are shifting their attention away from tradition landline phone services to VoIP services that run over the internet.