Most businesses that switch from a landline to VoIP say the same thing afterwards: they wish they'd done it sooner. That's not a marketing line — it's just what tends to happen when you replace something expensive and inflexible with something cheaper and better.

But "better" deserves unpacking. Here's an honest, side-by-side look at both options for South African businesses in 2026.

What we're actually comparing

When people say "landline," they usually mean a traditional copper-wire phone line — typically from Telkom — connected to either a physical PBX box on-site or directly to desk phones. You pay a monthly line rental, you pay per call, and the infrastructure sits in your office.

VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) sends calls over your internet connection instead. There's no copper line, no physical box, and no line rental. You pay a monthly fee per user, and the system lives in the cloud.

That difference in architecture is what drives almost every other difference on this list.

Cost: the most obvious reason to switch

A Telkom business line costs you money before you've made a single call. Line rental, then call rates on top — and calls to mobile numbers are billed at a meaningfully higher rate than landline-to-landline calls. For any business with regular call volumes, this adds up.

VoIP flips the model. A flat monthly fee per user covers your number, your calls, and all the features. No line rental. No per-minute mobile surcharge. No technician callout fee when you need to add an extension.

At Othos, pricing starts from R149 per user per month on a month-to-month basis. See current pricing →

For most businesses we work with, the switch cuts their monthly phone costs noticeably. The exact saving depends on your current setup and call volumes, but the direction is almost always the same.

Reliability: this is where it gets interesting

The common assumption is that landlines are more reliable. And for most of the world, that's historically been true.

In South Africa, it's more complicated.

Load shedding is the issue that changes the calculation entirely. A traditional phone system — PBX and all — goes down when your office loses power. Unless you're running a serious UPS setup, Stage 4 means your phones go dark.

With VoIP, the system itself runs in the cloud, on servers with enterprise-grade backup power. When your office loses power, calls automatically reroute to your team's mobile apps. Your customers still get through. This isn't a nice-to-have feature for South African businesses — it's a genuine operational advantage.

The other reliability concern with traditional landlines is Telkom's copper infrastructure, which has been extensively targeted by cable thieves over the years. If your copper line goes down, you're waiting for a technician. If your VoIP system has an issue, your provider fixes it remotely — often before you've even noticed.

Call quality: not the issue it used to be

Early VoIP had a reputation for choppy calls and delays. On a 2026 business fibre connection, that reputation is outdated.

On a stable fibre line, VoIP call quality is excellent — HD voice is standard, and most people can't tell the difference from a traditional call. The threshold is low: VoIP uses roughly 100kbps per active call, so even a modest business fibre line handles it easily.

Where quality can vary is on LTE or slower connections, or during network congestion. If your internet is unreliable, your VoIP calls will reflect that. On Telkom ADSL or a poor LTE signal, a landline would still serve you better. But for any business on standard business fibre — which is most businesses at this point — this is a non-issue.

Features: not remotely comparable

This is where landlines simply can't compete.

A traditional Telkom line gives you a phone number and the ability to make and receive calls. That's more or less it. Any additional features — call forwarding, voicemail, a multi-line setup — require additional hardware, configuration, or cost.

A cloud VoIP system includes, as standard:

• Auto-attendant ("Press 1 for sales...")

• Ring groups (one number rings multiple phones simultaneously)

• Call recording

• Voicemail to email

• Mobile app (your team takes business calls on their phones, showing your business number on caller ID)

• Real-time call reporting

• Remote working, built in

Setting up call routing on a traditional PBX means calling a technician. On a cloud system, you do it yourself in a browser in about five minutes. See all Features→

Flexibility and growth

Adding a new staff member to a traditional phone system means more hardware, possibly more lines, probably a technician visit. It's slow and it costs money each time.

With VoIP, adding a new user is a few clicks. They download the app, you assign them an extension, and they're making calls that afternoon. The same applies in reverse — scale down, and you just remove the user. No hardware to return, no contracts to renegotiate.

For businesses that are growing, hiring, or have staff working remotely or across multiple locations, this flexibility is genuinely significant. More about remote work→

When a landline still makes sense

To be fair: there are scenarios where sticking with a traditional line is defensible.

If your business has no fibre connection and poor LTE coverage, VoIP call quality may be inconsistent. If you have one phone, one line, very low call volumes, and no plans to grow — the cost saving from switching may not be dramatic enough to justify the change.

But for the vast majority of South African businesses with a fibre connection and more than a handful of staff? The landline case is hard to make.

The short version

Making the switch

Number porting is standard — you keep your existing business number. The process takes a few days and is handled by your new provider. Setup is typically live within a day of signing up.

See our VoIP plans for South African businesses →

Get in touch if you want to talk through your specific setup →

Related reading: What Is Cloud PBX? A Plain-English Guide for SA Businesses VoIP for Small Business in South Africa: Everything You Need to Know