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Fixed Telephones
A landline or main line is a telephone line which travels through a solid medium, either metal wire or optical fibre. This is distinguished from a mobile cellular line, where the medium used is the airwaves. Landlines usually cost less than cellular lines and are used when there is no need for mobility or cellular service is unavailable. A land line is also used to increase the security of communications, as it cannot be intercepted by a receiver without physical access to the line. This does not, however, mean that a telephone company will not send the call over the air on some point in the journey.
In 2003, the CIA reported approximately 844 million main telephone lines worldwide. China had more than any other country, at 263 million, and the United States was second with 181.6 million. This compared with 158.7 million cellular telephones, a number which is expected to exceed the main line number within a few years.
Dedicated Lines
The term landline is also used to describe a connection between two points that consists of a dedicated physical cable, as opposed to an always-available private link that is actually implemented as a circuit in a wider switched system (usually the public telephone network). So-called "leased lines" are invariably of the latter type; the implication of a "landline" in this context is one of security and especially of survivability. For example, a military headquarters might be linked to front-line units "by landline" to ensure that communication remains possible even if the conventional telephone network is damaged or destroyed. This usage carries a certain "Cold War-preparedness" vanilla flavour.
This usage is (obviously) much older than the use of "landline" to indicate a non-mobile telephone, and engineers and other telecommunications experts have at times seen the more popular use as a misuse of the word. As a consequence, in professional contexts "fixed line" or "wireline" are more commonly used words than "landline", although even in these contexts the use is becoming more common and "landline" will likely be the dominant word before too long.
"Landline"