I prefer the old landlines. The sound quality on cell phones is comparatively dismal - and if power goes out for an extended period, people without landlines are helpless in terms of communication.
I don’t think this transition was well thought-out.
cellphones suck, esp. in areas of sparse coverage like the vast areas of the midwest, rocky mountain states, and the great rural bulk of the nation on general ...
VOIP, though, generally gives fine quality, and hooked up to a gateway connected to a base-station with a plethora of wireless handsets works just as well as a copper pair, even better if the copper pairs are really old and crappy and buzz like crazy any time there’s heavy moisture ...
we actually have all three, including even an old-fashioned handset connected to a copper pair that requires no external power, so during power outages during blizzards we still have good voice connection to the world ...