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[Weaver]

How long did it take for the old PSTN to reach the majority of users, say 50%, 90%, 95%, 98%, 99% compared to those that have service today?

[Reformed]

https://www.britishtelephones.com/histuk.htm has some information.

[Alex Atkin UK]

Well, I know my grandparents were the first on the street to get a telephone.

[meritez]

Nationalisation happened in 1912: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Post_Office

1565 exchanges at that point and only 231 exchanges had more than 300 subscribers.

[Weaver]

Where and when, Alex?

@Meritez - that gives us some idea

[g3uiss]

My parents first phone number was 39 ! Via operator only 

[licquorice]

I suspect it was well into the late seventies/early eighties before phones became anything like ubiquitous. I can certainly remember UAXs with 500/600 lines in the seventies serving quite large villages. I can also remember working in some UAXs where the ringing machine would stop at times because there wasn't a single call in progress on the exchange.

[Weaver]

> I suspect it was well into the late seventies/early eighties before phones became anything like ubiquitous.

I’m surprised but am not old enough to have any info to base a judgement on, and I didn’t ask my parents or grandmother when I had the chance, so I defer to my friend liquorice.

My parents and all my relatives had phones in the sixties if not earlier, because they were farmers and more importantly so that my mum and the other relatives could spend ours every day gassing, seeing as they were a very very close-knit family, where three siblings in one family married three siblings in another.

[licquorice]

In 1972, I installed the equipment to enable the 7xx number range  on my local exchange, thus 600 lines, so until that point 500 lines would have been available and approaching capacity. The population of the village at that time was about 2000 plus another possibly 1000-1500 in the smaller surrounding villages also served by the exchange. So at a rough estimate 500-600 lines for approx 1000+ properties.
As piece of trivia, one of those 7xx numbers was mine and I still have the same number today 50 years later although now with 3 digits preceding it.

[Alex Atkin UK]

The estate I'm on was built to relocate people living in "the slums", so I'd imagine would be the last place to get mass adoption of telephones as they were all low-income families.

My grandparents got one simply because my grandfather owned a garage so work paid for it.  I don't really know anything more than that but if I remember can ask my mum.

[gt94sss2]

The table on https://www.statista.com/statistics/289158/telephone-presence-in-households-in-the-uk/ might be helpful.

[licquorice]

Yep, would seem to corroborate my earlier gut feeling replies.

[Weaver]

Just as Licquorice was saying, from 35% to ~75% in the 1970s, surprisingly a further increase in the 1980s. I suspect that’s to do with poverty in the 70s though; the 1980s was the era of working class to middle class aspiration and increased affluence, do you think that’s fair?

I’d be interested to see the earlier decades before 1970. I can ask Janet’s mum - who is 95 - about her ideas regarding telephone ownership. My uncle, mum’s brother, had a party line, as did Janet’s folks at their cottage in the woods in Staffordshire. My parents had a normal non-shared landline in the 1960s at the farm.

[4candles]

I suspect it was well into the late seventies/early eighties before phones became anything like ubiquitous.

Perhaps because of that pioneering influencer Buzby?   

[licquorice]