{"id":863811,"date":"2026-06-21T13:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-21T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=863811"},"modified":"2026-06-19T15:29:46","modified_gmt":"2026-06-19T13:29:46","slug":"south-africa-says-goodbye-to-landlines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/lifestyle\/863811\/south-africa-says-goodbye-to-landlines\/","title":{"rendered":"South Africa says goodbye to landlines"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Data reveals that 0.0% of South African households rely solely on landlines, highlighting a complete technological shift in the country. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The transition from traditional landlines and physical mail to cellular networks and digital communication has marked one of the most significant structural changes in South African households over the past two decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recent statistics from the General Household Survey indicate that cellular phones have become the dominant form of communication in South Africa, with landline usage nearly eradicated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By contrast, 93.8% of households depend exclusively on cellular phones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The highest rates of exclusive cellular phone usage are found in Limpopo (95.6%), KwaZulu-Natal (95.5%), and Mpumalanga (95.2%). The lowest rate of exclusive cellular use is in the Northern Cape, at 89.5%. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Very few households maintain both a landline and a cellular phone; this dual usage is most common in the Western Cape, where it accounts for only 3.8% of households.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A small fraction of the population remains completely disconnected, with only 3.7% of households lacking access to both landlines and cell phones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The dominance of cell phones is closely linked to how South Africans access the internet. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While only 20.6% of households have access to a fixed internet connection at home, such as fibre or ADSL, mobile broadband usage has rapidly increased.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The proportion of people connecting to the internet via cell phones surged by 57.6% between 2010 and 2025, rising significantly from 28.0% to 85.6%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The digital shift<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This shift to mobile technology has significantly benefited rural communities; while only 2.7% of rural households have fixed internet at home, 76.4% now access the internet through mobile devices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Due to this digital shift, the volume of mail handled by the South African Post Office has declined sharply as email and other electronic alternatives have replaced physical letters. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The decline in mail was already evident before the pandemic, with the percentage of households receiving no mail rising steadily from 9.0% in 2002 to 32.7% in 2019. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, the post-COVID digital shift accelerated this trend, driving the number up to 67.4% by 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the minority of households that still receive mail, geographic factors influence access.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Only 3.5% of rural households receive mail delivered to their homes, compared to 30.6% of urban households and 36.0% of metropolitan households. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In rural areas, direct delivery is so rare that these households are much more likely to rely on alternative methods to receive mail, such as collecting it from schools, workplaces, or community leaders (6.0%).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Relying on post boxes or private mail bags is relatively uncommon across the board, with only 3.8% of rural households and 2.8% of urban households using these methods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2025 survey indicates that 3.7% of South African households are entirely disconnected, lacking both landlines and cellular phones. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

With an estimated 20.1 million households in 2025, this amounts to around 744,218 households without any phone access. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The data also shows significant provincial differences: the highest disconnection rates are in the Northern Cape at 9.1%, followed by the Eastern Cape at 7.1% and the Free State at 6.0%. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mpumalanga (2.0%), Limpopo (2.1%), and KwaZulu-Natal (2.2%) have the lowest disconnection rates, indicating they have the fewest households that are completely disconnected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While 82.1% of South Africans can access the internet in some capacity, data from the State of the ICT Sector 2026 Report by ICASA reveals that mobile connectivity overwhelmingly dominates internet usage. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2024, more than 75% of the population accessed the internet through mobile data, with KwaZulu-Natal having the highest at 80% and the Northern Cape the lowest at 65.3%.
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recent statistics show that 93.8% of households in South Africa depend exclusively on cellular phones.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":863840,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9876],"tags":[10576,7685],"class_list":["post-863811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle","tag-general-household-survey","tag-internet-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/127"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=863811"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863811\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":864084,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863811\/revisions\/864084"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/863840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=863811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=863811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=863811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}