In the past year alone, some 3.1 million Australian changed addresses, either moving in, moving out moving together, or moving on. Moving residences is no simple matter. There are plenty of questions that beg to be answered, such as how much of the furniture is going to be kept, what the new layout will be like, who gets which room, and many more.
Yet for one important question, the polls appear to be speaking for themselves. According to the findings of a Roy Morgan Research study, 6% of Australians (aged 14+) who had a home phone last year do not have one now. Converted to numbers and that’s 810,000 home movers (including new market entrants) who abandoned their home phones in the last year alone.
The research further shows that more than one in five (21%) home movers with a home phone at their old address did not reconnect it; the percentage being much higher compared with non home movers with only 5% (1 in 20) choosing to disconnect their home phone lines.
Among all the age groups included in the study, house movers had the higher home phone abandonment rates than non movers.

According to the CEO of Roy Morgan Research, Michele Levine, moving residences clearly plays a role in home phone abandonment. Unlike people who aren’t moving, movers must actively make the decision to disconnect.
16% of Australians moved residences in the past year, representing an astonishing 30% of home phone abandonment across the country. This takes up a huge part of home phone losses for fixed line telcos. For these providers, the losses go beyond the revenue derived from line rental and call charges – and extend to customer loyalty and bundling which may be sourced from providing a core household product.
Ms. Levine further pointed out that the need for shared household phones has decreased with the arrival and the rising popularity of smartphones. Mobile phones have taken the lead, with fixed broadband being the core shared service in many households. Now, telcos offer home phone lines as an optional bundled add-on.
However, she says hope is not lost because despite the fact that recent movers did away with their home phone lines, 23% of them have said that they expect to subscribe to home phone line plans again in the coming year. For now, they just haven’t got around to reconnecting their phones yet.
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