On March 26, the head of Rostelecom, Mikhail Osevsky, said that the demand for the installation of landlines has increased in Russia. This comes amid regular communications outages across the country that have continued since May 2025. In March, this issue also affected Moscow. For three weeks, there was no mobile internet in some areas of the capital, and at times mobile communications were cut off. Meanwhile, experts believe that the demand for fixed telephones is actually greatly exaggerated. This is confirmed by Meduza’s surveys. We’ll tell you what we know about it.
The number of orders for the installation of landlines “has grown very significantly,” said Rostelecom President Mikhail Osevsky. He did not give specific numbers, but added that “many very respectable people” now want to have this kind of reliable communication at home.
“It’s just a foolproof method [связи]. I immediately advise everyone to return to landline. “Like a fire extinguisher, this should be in every home,” TASS quoted Osievsky as saying.
The head of Rostelecom made this statement two days after the full return of mobile Internet to Moscow. Before that, city residents (especially in the center and south) faced outages for about three weeks. Additionally, in some cases, normal cellular connections did not work.
Former editor-in-chief of the magazine “Russian Planet” Pavel Priyannikov returns from mid-March books In his Telegram channel about the growing demand for fixed phones, based on personal experience. “I know at least two people who are thinking about installing a landline phone; one of them rents an apartment in a new building in Dolgoprudny, and in new buildings now such phones are not installed.” He added He commented to Forbes a few days later.
The founder of mobile communications company and Internet provider Ecomobile, Igor Jelenko, also told the publication that two of his friends who live in central Moscow installed a landline phone. “With wired Internet in the apartment, they installed a phone, because objectively this may still be the only source of communication. Nowadays, a lot of Wi-Fi Internet, and traditional wired Internet, depends on mobile communications,” he noted.
Zhilenko himself did not experience any cell phone outages in the capital. He believes the increase in demand for landlines will come primarily from “anxious people” who fear being left completely without a connection. However, this will not affect the overall decline in the popularity of landline phones.
An interviewer with Forbes magazine, who works for a telecommunications company, confirms that the number of fixed-line phone connection requests has increased compared to the previous year, but they are still very rare.
Mobile Research Group analyst Eldar Murtazin, in a comment on the post, said that from March 9 to 10, the number of fixed-line connections requests within the Garden Ring has almost doubled. In regions, this growth is estimated to range from 30% to 70%, depending on the region. However, Murtazen adds, in most cases, this communication is linked by business owners, for whom it is important to have an additional communication channel with customers.
About the growth in demand for landline telephones in St. Petersburg two days before the statement of Mikhail Usevsky books And Komsomolskaya Pravda with reference to Rostelecom. But even in this case, no specific numbers were provided and no indication was made of the audience among whom this type of communication was gaining popularity.
Judging by the results of the Meduza Telegram channel, in which about 50 thousand readers participated, information about the sharp increase in interest in landline phones, especially from ordinary users, is greatly exaggerated.
In response to the question “When was the last time you used a landline?” Only 2% of participants to choose The answer choice is “Regularly.” Another 10% reported using it occasionally. Most of them (76%) have called a landline for many years. Meanwhile, only 12% of respondents own homes there Like this phone.
The vast majority of them use mobile communications and have no plans to return to fixed telephones. Only 2% of readers certainWho are thinking about installing a landline phone. 83% of participants do not plan to do so in the near future.
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