What is a Landline Number?
The term landline number refers to a telephone number on the fixed-line phone network. Fixed-line phone numbers form part of the PSTN and are called landline or fixed-line numbers as traditionally they were fixed to a specific location such as a house address or office location and historically used the phone network over-land cabling to transmit phone calls, hence both names landline and fixed-line.
Since the advent of VoIP and SIP technology, the name has stayed, but the reality is that landline numbers are no longer fixed to an exact location.
Landline numbers are constructed as a series of numbers that make up a phone number and are used to identify callers and called parties to ensure phone calls are transmitted correctly. As a mimimum, a landline number will consist of at least three parts:
Country Code + Area Code + Phone Number + Extension Number
For example, a landline number in London, UK, in E.164 Format (International Standard Numbering Plan for the worldwide PSTN) may look something like this:
When dialling nationally, the E.164 numbering plan is not required and therefore the country code is not required. However, in this case the standard local formatting is required and therefore, the full area code must be dialled.
So the same number again would look like this:
