Landlines Going Away

@spoom2  I saw the CPUC letter but decided not to include that in my post (shoulda put a link like you did) to keep it a bit more generic to the forum users in general because it will eventually affect everyone everywhere who has landline service. I think this is why we were having some posts awhile back where folks were either having a hard time getting their landlines repaired or were being told they needed to sign up for a newer service.

@OttoPylot My thinking was those in California who want to voice their opinion would do it in the California topic. Hopefully I'm not wrong. This really makes me wonder why AT&T ever did away with their stand-alone wireless home phone, Verizon still has it and several resellers have them. The only problem with pushing VoIP is many areas don't have the require broadband to reliably support it. the same can be said for wireless home phones. I see a lot of issues to overcome, I do believe the technology is there though.  

I wonder what back power will be used to keep towers operational during a power failure.  911 is why I have a rotary phone and a land line.

Cell towers have batteries and many have dedicated generators to supply power for several days in the event of loss of utility power.

During a disaster when cell service is out, Landlines are a lifesaving alternative. Please don't take away the only means of communication in such a time. Cell service is inferior and unreliable. Landlines are DEPENDABLE.

This topic was started to provide information on the FCC decision. We are customers like you so we aren't part of this decision were here to give the best information we can. You need to understand the why. Just because your traditional landline is dependable doesn't mean all POTS service is. The copper plant is very old and has been deteriorating for a good many years. I was a cable splicer and cable maintenance technician starting in the early 70's and much of the plant I worked on was old at that time.  Being cable maintenance, I would troubleshoot and repair the copper infrastructure. During this time the phone companies were a regulated monopoly, which most forgot the regulated part. Since it was regulated, we were required to maintain service and since we were a monopoly, we were able to adjust prices as needed, with government oversite, to do this maintenance.  Then in 1984 came the breakup of the Bell System, people cheered they no longer had to stick with Ma Bell, that was until prices started going up because cost of maintaining the old infrastructure kept going up along with the cost of labor to get qualified technicians to maintain it. All this plus the competition lead to less money for infrastructure and techs and if all that wasn't enough the phone companies were required to give their competition access to their plant at a reduced cost, cutting even further into their profits. So, they petitioned the FCC to lift the requirements so they could concentrate on more profitable ventures, this all started about 1996. In 2019 the FCC granted the phone companies, all of them, permission to phase out traditional landlines, which they are all in the process of starting. They aren't putting money into the old copper plant because the cost is just too high for the returns they get. I could go on, but this is getting too long. This is a very simplified explanation as to why all the phone carriers are doing away with POTS service.  For more detailed information as to what's going on read the FCC orders provided and google the information for plane English examples. 

@spoom2  Excellent summary!

What does someone use in place of a landline when cellular is not an option.

If you have decent Internet VoIP. Do you not have a cell signal from any carrier? Right now the choices are Cell phone, Wireless home phone, which also uses a cell signal and VoIP.