Conversations over the classic landline telephone are becoming out of fashion. Last year, 64 billion minutes of calls were made from such devices in Germany, 20 percent less than in 2022, the Federal Network Agency said in response to a dpa request. There was only a slight decrease of three percent in mobile phone calls to 154 billion call minutes. Voice telephony via online services such as Whatsapp, Threema or Signal, however, increased significantly, by 45 percent to 175 billion minutes. Video telephony over the Internet lands just ahead of it in the communication statistics with 176 billion minutes - an increase of 23 percent.

There are various reasons for the change in communication. On the one hand, the better cell phone networks are likely to be a factor: Anyone who previously shied away from an online connection because they expected poor transmission quality can now rely on largely good quality.

In addition, flat rate tariffs with large monthly data volumes are now commonplace - consumers no longer have to use their smartphones sparingly. Another factor that may play a role is that many companies no longer rely on the classic landline telephone for their communication, but rather on online services that run via the landline Internet or mobile communications.