In 2001, over 96 per cent of Australians had a home phone connection. This has halved over the past two decades as new technologies, including mobile phones, broadband internet and subscription TV have made increasing inroads into Australian households.
The changing way Australians consume their media is starkly illustrated when looking at long-term trends for the technologies Australians use.
Over the course of the past year, the proportion of Australians with access to subscription/pay TV services at home has increased to 66.5 per cent, up 4.9 percentage points from a year ago (61.6 per cent in June 2018), and up a whopping 37.4 percentage points over the past four years since June 2015 (29.1 per cent).
Driving the increase has been the huge take-up of subscription TV or subscription video on demand (SVOD) services now that Netflix is accessible to around 11.5 million Australians.
In total, 57.1 per cent of Australians now have access to SVOD services including Netflix as well as rivals such as Stan, Amazon Prime, YouTube Premium and others.
Just four years ago, less than two per cent of Australians had SVOD.
The incredibly fast take-up of these new technologies, and the almost ubiquitous usage of mobile phones now used by 95.9 per cent of Australians, has accelerated the decline in the proportion of Australians that have a home phone connected.
Now less than half the population have a home phone connected (48.6 per cent), down 9.5 percentage points from a year ago.
These findings from the Roy Morgan Single Source survey are derived from in-depth face-to-face personal interviews with over 50,000 Australians each year in their homes.
Roy Morgan chief executive Michele Levine says that the exceptionally fast take-up of subscription TV in the past few years is attracting a field of competitors keen to grab a piece of the action.
“The stunning rise in subscription TV in recent years remarkably means that more Australians now have household access to the likes of Netflix, Stan and their rivals than a home phone connection,” Ms Levine said.
“Not too long ago (early in the 21st Century for example) a home phone connection was regarded as all but ubiquitous and over 95 per cent of Australians had one at home.”
Do you still have a landline connected at your home? Have you considered getting rid of it to save money?
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