When thousands and thousands of AT&T customers across the country briefly lost cell service last month, Francella Jackson, 61, of Fairview Heights, Illinois, said she took her worn-out landline phone with a Southwestern Bell button and “just called your friends.” We could laugh at individuals who couldn’t use their phones.”
“Well, isn’t it great that we can talk and have a great conversation?” she remembered saying that. “We had a good laugh.”
Derek Shaw, 68, of York, Pennsylvania, said he has an Android cell phone but prefers to talk at home on a black, cordless landline. The sound quality is better, he said, and the phone is easier to hold during long conversations. Shaw said he also likes talking to people face-to-face rather than over Zoom, and he never got rid of his vinyl collection when CDs became hot in the 1990s.
“I didn’t even think about giving up my landline,” he said. “I’ll kick and scream when I actually have to.”
For many, landlines seem as essential as steamships and telegrams in the age of smartphones. However, for those who continue to use them, they offer clear benefits. Caused by the AT&T outage on February 22 ia pressure from AT&T to phase out traditional landline phones in California, those who have them are speaking out in defense of their old phones.
For them, a landline phone is a lifesaver during power outages, a welcome return to the era before the doomsday and push alerts, as well as a more convenient and better-sounding alternative to small, thin smartphones.
“I love my landline,” said Ms. Jackson, who has had hers since the 1980s. “People call me old-fashioned, but I will be old-fashioned.”
She has a mobile phone, but there is no Internet at home, she added. She likes that she still remembers her friends’ phone numbers and has never answered a call. “I’m a little nostalgic,” Ms. Jackson said. “With technology, while I support it, there are certain things I like to hold on to.”
Some younger people also see the benefits of landline phones. Cory Sechrest, 32, of Chicago, said he and his girlfriend were given a pink landline phone to use in case of a power outage. He said he didn’t know anyone his age who had that.
When friends visit, “they stop and look and say, ‘What is that?'” he said. “Causes a few chuckles.”
Landline phones may seem like a portal to the pre-internet era. Many Americans grew up with a classic rotary telephone mounted on the kitchen wall that the entire family used, providing reliability but no privacy. Some bought a burger phone for their teenage bedroom after weeks of begging their parents. Some lusted football phone which was free with a Sports Illustrated subscription.
Writer Charli Penn wrote Therapy in the apartment that as a millennial, she has a landline because it gives her a break from her cell phone, is easier for her father to use, and allows her to go back in time.
“If plaid miniskirts, ivy garland, and chunky-soled combat boots are making a welcome comeback, why can’t I spend even an hour of conversation using the cordless home phone like I did in my teens and early 20s? ?” Mrs. Penn wrote.
Some people prefer landline phones also for aesthetic reasons. Mark Treutelaar, co-owner with his wife Galina of the Old Phone Shop, which sells and repairs landline phones in Franklin, Wisconsin, said he has noticed an increase in sales of brightly colored wall and desk rotary phones from the 1960s and 1970s.
“We’ve been selling more phones recently than ever before,” Treutelaar said. “People like them just because they remember them from their youth, and even if they don’t have a landline, they buy them as decorations or connect them to their cell phones via Bluetooth.”
Others use landlines in rural areas where cell phone reception is spotty. Still, landline phone users are a distinct minority in the United States.
According to the data, about 73 percent of American adults in 2022 lived in households without a landline phone but with at least one cell phone. latest data collected by the federal government. Not surprisingly, age was a key factor in phone use. Nearly 90 percent of Americans ages 25 to 29 said they use cell phones exclusively, compared to less than half of Americans over the age of 65.
Citing declining popularity of landline phones, AT&T asked California regulators last year for a waiver from maintaining a traditional copper-wired telephone network of the kind that connected American households for much of the last century.
AT&T reported that the number of copper landlines, known as plain old telephone service, or POTS, provided in California dropped 89 percent between 2000 and 2021. According to the California Office of Public Defenders, customers typically pay about $34.50 per month for this service. However, according to AT&T, even the majority of landline users use primarily mobile phones.
“Like rented blockbusters and Kodak films, POTS has fallen from technological preeminence to virtual obsolescence in a single generation.” AT&T wrote in its application to the California Public Utilities Commission.
AT&T described the proposal as part of a multi-year effort to eventually move landline customers to cell phones or fiber-optic cables for Internet and landline service. He says 20 other states have already allowed this transition to be made.
“No customer will be left without voice or 911 service,” Susan Johnson, executive vice president of wireline transformation at AT&T, said in a statement. “For customers who do not already have alternative options available, we will continue to provide their existing voice service for as long as necessary.”
Still, the proposal sparked fierce opposition from hundreds of landline users public comments calling on California to reject it. Many people say that a copper conduit system, because it usually has its own power supply, is the surest way to reach emergency services in the event of a power failure during a flood, fire or storm. AT&T claims that fiber-optic cables are more durable and easier to repair, although a fiber-optic phone will die without a backup battery.
“Especially if we have health problems, the most important thing is to be able to use the rotary phone,” said Francesca Ciancutti, a resident of Mendocino County, California. “It’s absolutely essential. And all our neighbors feel the same.”
It’s a problem that has led many people across the country to stick with landlines.
Katie Lanza, 37, of Fort Worth, said she was once waiting for insurance to replace her cellphone that had been bitten by her dog when she got sick in the middle of the night. With no way to call for help, she knocked on her neighbor’s door at 2 a.m. That was about 14 years ago, she said, and she’s had a landline since then.
“I was always afraid that if something happened to my cell phone, I wouldn’t be able to call anyone,” Ms. Lanza said.
Ms Jackson said she was worried about cyberattacks disrupting her mobile phone services. But most of all, she said, her landline is simply a better way to talk to people after work.
“I just like to relax and remember what it was like,” she said. “I find it relaxing to answer calls and talk to friends on a landline.”
