The Fixed Line All but Vanishes in Greece
Fixed line telephony in Greece has reached a point where standalone voice services are nearly extinct, marking a structural shift in both technology and consumer behavior. Market data for 2024 illustrates how traditional landline usage has eroded to the edges of relevance in a digital era dominated by broadband connectivity.
Access lines dropped to 4.67 million in 2024, reflecting a 3.8 percent decline from 2023 and signaling the ongoing retreat of the sector. PSTN and ISDN technologies, once the backbone of Greek landline communication, have essentially disappeared, with OTE reducing its related lines to zero by December 2024.
Standalone fixed telephony survives only in rare, highly specific cases.
Legacy circuit switched networks that served households for decades no longer hold commercial presence. In 2015, PSTN and ISDN lines exceeded 2.5 million for OTE and 1.65 million for other operators, yet by the end of 2024 they were reduced to negligible levels across the industry.
Voice services now rely almost entirely on VoIP delivered through VDSL or fiber broadband, meaning fixed line products without an internet bundle have effectively vanished. Fixed line penetration fell to 44.9 percent of the population, underscoring that fewer than half of homes and businesses maintain an active landline today.
Usage decline has been just as pronounced. Outgoing call volume plunged 24.2 percent in 2024, dropping to 7.7 billion minutes compared with 17.2 billion minutes in 2015. National calls to fixed lines experienced the steepest fall, sliding from 7.8 billion minutes in 2023 to 5.8 billion in 2024, far below the 14.457 billion minutes recorded in 2015.
Calls to mobile phones also shrank, reaching 1.7 billion minutes in 2024 from a long term average of 2.2 billion, reinforcing the broader trend toward reduced landline usage. Average monthly call time per connection decreased to 135.7 minutes, representing a decline of more than 20 percent compared to 2023.
OTE retained over 55 percent of fixed access lines and more than 50 percent of outgoing call traffic, despite contraction across all call categories. Retail revenues from fixed voice services slipped 4 percent in 2024, while internet service revenues continued to expand.
Consumers increasingly treat internet access as the essential product, viewing fixed voice merely as an add on rather than a service that influences their subscription decisions
