What we know so far
The landline has all but disappeared from South African homes, according to the country’s latest official household data.
Statistics South Africa’s General Household Survey 2025, released on 26 May 2026, found that 93.8% of households now rely exclusively on cellphones for telephone communication.
The share of households that depend only on a fixed landline has fallen to a negligible level. This continues a two-decade decline that has effectively ended the landline as a standalone household device.
The survey was conducted across all nine provinces between January and December 2025. It is the country’s longest-running household survey and a primary measure of service access and delivery.
The shift is mirrored in regulatory data. The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa, in its State of the ICT Sector Report released on 31 March 2026, recorded that total fixed-line revenue fell by 11.8% in 2025.
Revenue from fixed-telephone calls specifically dropped by 11.9% over the same period, according to ICASA.
Together, the two official sources capture both sides of the same structural change. Households have abandoned the landline, and the revenue that once flowed through fixed voice networks is shrinking.
Why it matters
Communication access shapes how South Africans work, study, bank, and reach emergency services. The data confirms that this access now runs almost entirely through mobile networks.
For most households, the cellphone is no longer a complement to a landline. It is the only phone in the home.
The trend also marks the long decline of legacy infrastructure built around copper fixed lines. ICASA links the fall in fixed-line revenue to the rise of over-the-top platforms, which let users call and message over data connections rather than traditional voice lines.
That has direct consequences for operators that historically depended on fixed-line voice income. It also weakens the commercial case for maintaining ageing copper networks.
There is an access gap that the headline figures can obscure. The survey found that 3.7% of households have neither a landline nor a cellphone.
With an estimated 20.1 million households in the country, that share represents roughly 744,000 homes with no telephone access of any kind.
The same data shows the divide is geographic. Connectivity is now near-universal in some provinces while parts of the country remain materially worse off.
Key details and figures
Exclusive cellphone use was highest in Limpopo at 95.6%, followed by KwaZulu-Natal at 95.5% and Mpumalanga at 95.2%, according to the General Household Survey 2025.
The Northern Cape recorded the lowest rate of exclusive cellphone use, at 89.5%.
Households that keep both a landline and a cellphone are now rare. This dual use was most common in the Western Cape, where it still accounted for only 3.8% of households.
Complete disconnection was most common in the Northern Cape at 9.1%, the Eastern Cape at 7.1%, and the Free State at 6.0%.
The lowest disconnection rates were in Mpumalanga at 2.0%, Limpopo at 2.1%, and KwaZulu-Natal at 2.2%.
Internet access has moved in the opposite direction. The survey recorded that access to the internet through all means reached 85.6% of households by 2025, up from 28.0% in 2010.
That access is overwhelmingly mobile. Only 20.6% of households had a fixed internet connection at home, such as fibre or ADSL, while mobile data carried the majority of connections.
The mobile bias is sharpest in rural areas. Only 2.7% of rural households had fixed internet at home, while 76.4% reached the internet through mobile devices.
ICASA’s sector data put national mobile internet usage at 75.6%, with the Eastern Cape lowest at 65.3%.
The same digital shift has hollowed out the postal system. The share of households receiving no mail rose from 9.0% in 2002 to 32.7% in 2019, then climbed to 67.4% by 2025 as email and messaging replaced letters.
Rural areas are least served by mail. Only 3.5% of rural households received mail at home, compared with 30.6% of urban households and 36.0% of metropolitan households.
What happens next
The next General Household Survey, covering 2026, is expected from Statistics South Africa in May 2027. It will show whether the small remaining base of landline-reliant and fully disconnected households shrinks further.
ICASA collects fixed-line and mobile revenue data annually. Its next sector report will indicate whether the decline in fixed-line call revenue continues at the current pace.
Unresolved questions remain over the roughly 744,000 households with no phone access, and whether mobile coverage and affordability can close that gap.
The figures do not by themselves settle the future of South Africa’s copper fixed-line network, the cost of maintaining it, or how operators will migrate remaining fixed-line customers to fibre and mobile services.
What the latest official data establishes is narrower and firmer. As of the 2025 survey, the South African household landline is no longer a mainstream technology.
