For those of a certain age, there was always a telephone in the house. It sat in a specific, fixed area, connected to the wall by a wire, and if you wanted to make or receive a call, that’s where you went. Only the “rich folks” had more than one phone in the house.

Looking at that technology now through 2014 eyes, it seems somewhat quaint. Imagine having to run (sometimes literally) to reach the ringing phone before the caller would hang up in frustration; there were no answering machines, Caller ID, or “Star-86” options to automatically call them back. It was kind of frustrating.

It seems that phone companies have no nostalgic feelings about those times either, if a recent blog post is to be believed.

According to Nigel Eastwood, CEO of New Call Telecom, a UK-based telecommunications company, it’s good riddance to the old ways. Writing in HuffingtonPost UK, Eastwood cites some sobering statistics which might well mean the death knell for landline phones.

“The latest figures from UK telecoms regulator Ofcom are startling. In the year to June 2014, we spent three billion fewer minutes on landline calls, a reduction of 12.7 per cent,” Eastwood notes. “That means operators lost out on £85m (about US$133 million) of revenue compared with the previous year. The situation has got so bad for landlines that according to research by RootMetrics, 95 per cent of us would not struggle without a fixed landline telephone.”

And what has been one driver that’s pushing fixed phones away? Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP.

Eastwood goes on to note that back in October, the EU Commission decided that landlines were so passé, it would no longer regulate fixed line calls. He quoted the outgoing VP for the European Commission overseeing communications and technology, Neelie Kroes, who said: "There has been a decrease in volume of fixed calls as customers have turned to alternative solutions, such as voice-over-IP (VoIP) and mobile calls, but also to alternative providers, like Over-the-Top (OTT) players."

But it’s not just the ubiquity of cell phones and VoIP affecting the change; it’s also a matter of money.

“VoIP calling apps are free. There is generally no charge for calls that are peer-to-peer and no standing charge for line rental,” Eastwood points out. “When a great quality product is free, it's never going to be anything else other than incredibly popular. And if you live in a country where money is tight for the vast majority, then you're always going to choose the free option. It's not rocket science.”