Germans are losing interest in the traditional landline phone network while internet and mobile telephony are become more and more popular. The traditional landline network was used on average 33 hours on a per capita basis by Germans in the year 2008 which is 2.5% less than in the year 2007. For this year another decrease in the landline network usage amounting to between 3 and 4% is expected. This was found out by the German Association for Information Management, Telecommunications and New Media (BITKOM). Thanks to appealing flat rates for traditional phone connections the above mentioned process of the landline network becoming less important happens less rapidly than in other countries, according to BITKOM.
There is a constant shift taking place with regard to the landline network: the number of non-broad band connections (analogous and ISDN connections) has been decreasing for a few years in Germany. While in the year 2002 there were still almost 40 million of such connections, their number fell to 35.4 million in the year 2008. Last year the drop in the number of such connections was particularly significant reaching 5 %.
On the other hand, the importance of broadband and internet telephony is increasing. In 2008 3.7 million households were already making phone calls over the internet with 1.5 million using cable TV connections and 2.2 million a special kind of DSL connections which are not bound by contract to any traditional landline network connection. In 2008 the number of people using TV cable and special DSL connections amounted to just 0.8 million and 0.7 million respectively.
There were in total 39.1 million landline telephone connections in Germany at the end of 2008 and more than 107 million mobile ones which is more than twice as much. According to the Federal Statistical Office, about 9% of all German households were making phone calls exclusively over mobile phones at the beginning of the year 2008. 