Landlines are like the cat on that poster – hanging in there

Last week, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) rejected AT&T’s request to be released from its obligations as a Carrier of Last Resort (COLR), meaning the telecom giant must continue to provide landline services to residents across California into the future.

What is COLR? A provision of the law, usually pertaining to a utility monopoly, that mandates basic service be provided to all customers within a territory, no matter where they live.

California is one of the states that still keep COLR rules active (though maybe not for much longer). In many others, large telecom companies were able to eliminate them by promising to freeze residential telephone rates, Doug Dawson, president of telecom consulting company CCG Consulting, writes.

• AT&T has been a COLR in California since 1996, but recently asked to be released from these obligations, citing the high cost to maintain copper landlines + the wide availability of alternatives like mobile service and VoIP.
• However, in ruling against AT&T, the CPUC said California residents "highlighted the unreliability of [these] voice alternatives" at public hearings.

Between the landlines: One of the biggest benefits of landlines is being able to reliably call 911 in the case of an emergency and/or cell network outage. (Landlines still need electricity, but when the power goes out, massive generators at telephone providers kick-in to provide this juice.)

☎️ Zoom out: In 2010, ~75% of American adults lived in a household with a landline. By 2022, that figure had dropped to 27%.