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The Decline of the Landline
Death Metal writes "The phone network is thus not just a technical infrastructure, but a socioeconomic one. The more Americans abandon it to go mobile-only or make phone calls over the Internet, the more fragile it becomes: its high fixed costs have to be spread over ever fewer subscribers. If the telephone network in New York State were a stand-alone business, it would already be in bankruptcy. In recent years it has lost 40% of its landlines and revenues have dropped by more than 30%."
One compelling reason is quality. For instance, I had some job interviews recently, and I'd never do an interview over a cell phone. You worry about the calls cutting out, cuts here and there in the quality, and not being able to hear a question over the phone just looks bad.
The greatest revenge in life is massive success.
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Why do I keep my landline?
DSL
My security alarm needs it
The sound quality is far better than any cell I've ever had
During my 5 day power outage, my landline still worked
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Businesses still need land lines unless you plan on giving everyone a work cell phone or have them share phones.
Or, you know, just get VoIP.
In the area of New Orleans where I live (and didn't flood), the only way for people to communicate with the outside world was with land lines and old phones which are powered completely off the line (no wall warts).
Much of the cellular system didn't work. The remaining working systems were nearly impossible to use.
I hate using cell phones for more than a few minutes and always use a land line for long conversations. I also need to keep the land line for our alarm systems.
I was amazed to discover that my collection of 40s - 70s rotary dial phones dial perfectly on the Cox Digital phone system.
If the landline would just compete with the cell network, not as many people would be turning it off.
I mean, if I could make my landline phone ring different tones for different callers, block calls from whoever I don't want to talk to (I'd be downloading the whole range of "Who called me" perpetrators from the internet), forward the phone to another phone remotely, either over the internet or over another phone, have voicemailboxes that would decode the voice, create text, and e-mail it to me at work or text it to me on a cell, and all the other features anyone can think of, then... maybe it'd be useful enough to actually want to hang onto.
I keep it because its WAAAAAY more reliable than my cell, but it could stand a lot of 21st century upgrading.