Fixed telephony users remain proudly ‘old-fashioned’ in the digital age

When millions of AT&T customers across the country briefly lost their cell phone service last month, Francella Jackson, 61, of Fairview Heights, Illinois, said she picked up her worn Southwestern Bell push-button landline and called her friends “just like that.” we could laugh at the people who couldn’t use their phones.”

“Why, isn’t it great that we can talk and have a good conversation?” she remembered saying. “We had a good laugh.”

Derek Shaw, 68, of York, Pennsylvania, said he has an Android cell phone but prefers to talk on his black wireless landline at home. The sound quality is better, he says, and the phone is easier to hold during long calls. Mr. Shaw said he also enjoys talking to people face-to-face rather than over Zoom, and never got rid of his vinyl record collection when CDs became popular in the 1990s.

“I never even thought about giving up my landline,” he says. “I’ll kick and scream if I have to.”

For many, in the smartphone age, landline phones have become as essential as steamships and telegrams. But for those who still use them, they offer clear benefits. Following the AT&T outage on February 22 and a pressure from AT&T to phase out traditional landlines in California, those who have them are speaking out in defense of their old phones.

For them, the landline is a lifeline during power outages, a welcome return to the era before doom scrolling and push alerts, and a more comfortable, better-sounding alternative to tinny, flimsy smartphones.

“I love my landline,” said Ms. Jackson, who has had hers since the 1980s. “People call me old-fashioned, but I’ll be old-fashioned.”

She has a cell phone, but no internet at home, she said. She likes that she still remembers her friends’ phone numbers and a call is never dropped. “I’m a little nostalgic,” Mrs. Jackson said. “While I embrace technology, there are some things I like to hold on to.”

Some younger people also see benefits to landlines. Cory Sechrest, 32, of Chicago, said he and his girlfriend received a pink landline phone in case the power goes out. He said he doesn’t know anyone else his age who has one.

When friends visit, “they pause for a moment, look at it and say, ‘What is that?'” he said. “It gets a few laughs.”

Landlines can feel like a portal to the pre-internet age. Many Americans grew up with the classic rotary telephone on the kitchen wall that the entire family had to share, offering reliability but no privacy. Some got the civilian phone in their teenage room after weeks of begging their parents. Some coveted the football phone which came free with a subscription to Sports Illustrated.

The writer Charli Penn wrote in Apartment therapy that as a millennial she got a landline because it gives her a break from her cell phone, is easier for her father to use and takes her back in time.

“If plaid miniskirts, ivy streamers, and thick-soled combat boots are enjoying a welcome comeback, why can’t I happily chat for hours on my cordless home phone, just like I did in my teens and early twenties? ?” Mrs. Penn wrote.

Some also like landline phones for aesthetic reasons. Mark Treutelaar, co-owner, with his wife Galina, of the Old Phone Shop, which sells and repairs landline telephones in Franklin, Wisconsin, said he has noticed an increase in sales of brightly colored wall and desk chairs with rotary dial telephones from the sixties and seventies.

“We have recently been selling more phones than ever before,” said Mr Treutelaar. “People like them because they remember them from when they were younger, and even if they don’t have a landline, they just buy them as decoration or pair them with mobile phones via Bluetooth.”

Others rely on landlines in rural areas with poor mobile coverage. Yet landline users are a distinct minority in the United States.

About 73 percent of American adults in 2022 lived in a household without a landline but at least one cell phone. the most recent 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 report using only cell phones, compared to less than half of Americans over 65.

Citing the plummeting popularity of landlines, AT&T asked California regulators last year to be relieved of their obligation to maintain the traditional copper wire network, the kind that has connected American households for most of the last century.

AT&T said the number of copper landlines, known as plain old telephone service, or POTS, it offers in California fell 89 percent between 2000 and 2021. Customers generally pay about $34.50 per month for that service, according to the California Public Advocates Office. . But even most landline users rely primarily on their cell phones, AT&T said.

“Like Blockbuster rentals and Kodak movies, POTS has fallen from technological primacy to effective obsolescence over the course of a generation,” AT&T wrote in its filing with the California Public Utilities Commission.

AT&T described the proposal as part of a multi-year effort to eventually transition landline customers to cellphones or to fiber-optic cables that carry Internet and landline phone services. It says 20 other states have already allowed this transition.

“No customer will be left without a voice or 911 service,” Susan Johnson, executive vice president of wireline transformation at AT&T, said in a statement. “For customers who do not yet have alternative options available, we will continue to offer their existing voice service for as long as necessary.”

Still, the proposal has sparked a fierce backlash, with hundreds of landline users signing up public comments Urge California to reject it. Many say that because the copper wire system is generally self-sufficient, it is the most reliable way to reach emergency services if power goes out during a flood, wildfire or storm. AT&T says fiber optic cables are more resilient and easier to repair, although a fiber optic phone will fail if a backup battery is not installed.

“Especially when we have health problems, being able to use our rotary phone is the most important thing,” says Francesca Ciancutti, who lives in Mendocino County, California. “It’s absolutely crucial. And all our neighbors think the same.”

It’s a concern that has led many people across the country to keep their landlines.

Katie Lanza, 37, of Fort Worth, said she was once waiting for an insurance replacement for her cell phone, which was chewed by her dog, when she got sick in the middle of the night. Unable to call for help, she knocked on the neighbors door at 2 a.m. That was about fourteen years ago, she said, and she’s had a landline ever since.

“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 is concerned about cyberattacks disrupting her cell phone service. But most of all, she said, her landline is just a nicer way to talk to people after work.

“I just like to relax and remember things how they were,” she said. “It’s relaxing for me to pick up and have a long conversation with my friends on my landline.”