Editing Landline (section)

== Usage and statistics ==
In 2003, the [[CIA World Factbook]] reported approximately 1.263 billion main [[telephone]] lines worldwide. [[China]] had more than any other country, at 350 million, and the [[United States]] was second with 268 million. The [[United Kingdom]] had 23.7 million residential fixed home phones.<ref>{{cite web |title=UK households: ownership of landline telephones 1970–2017 {{!}} Survey |url=https://www.statista.com/statistics/289158/telephone-presence-in-households-in-the-uk/ |website=Statista |access-date=11 November 2018 |language=en}}</ref>

A 2013 International Telecommunication Union report showed that the total number of fixed-telephone subscribers in the world was about 1.26 billion.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Statistics/Documents/statistics/2014/Fixed_tel_2000-2013.xls |title=Fixed-telephone subscriptions |publisher=International Telecommunication Union |access-date=2014-10-23 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141121092249/http://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Statistics/Documents/statistics/2014/Fixed_tel_2000-2013.xls |archive-date=2014-11-21 }}</ref>

In many parts of the world, including Africa and India, the growth in mobile phone usage has outpaced that of landlines. In the United States, while 45.9 percent of households still had landlines as of 2017, more than half had only mobile phones. This trend is similar in Canada, where more than one in five households used mobile phones as their only source for telephone service in 2013. However, voice over IP (VoIP) services offer an alternative to traditional landlines, allowing numbers to remain in use without being tied to a physical location, making them more adaptable to modern ways of working. The FCC maintains both landline and Voice over IP subscriber numbers to monitor long term trends in usage.<ref>[https://www.fcc.gov/reports-research/reports/voice-telephone-services-reports/voice-telephone-services-status-june-30 Voice Telephone Services: Status as of June 30, 2022], August 18, 2023, FCC.gov</ref>