Landline

Landline

A landline telephone (also known as land line, land-line, main line, and fixed-line) refers to a phone which uses a solid medium telephone line such as a metal wire or fiber optic cable for transmission as distinguished from a mobile cellular line which uses radio waves for transmission.

In 2003, the CIA 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 has 23.7 million residential fixed landlines. In 2008, the world had 1.27 billion fixed line subscribers.