AT&T cellphone outage makes it clear: In the United States, ‘old school’ landlines are languishing
NEW YORK — When her cellphone's service went down this week because of an AT&T network outage[1], Bernice Hudson didn't panic. She just called the people she wanted to talk to the old-fashioned way — on her landline telephone, the kind she grew up with and refuses to get rid of even though she has a mobile phone.
“Don’t get me wrong, I like cellphones,” the 69-year-old Alexandria, Virginia, resident said Thursday, the day of the outage. “But I’m still old school.”
Rows of old and newer telephones along with office switchboards are displayed Nov. 12, 2011 in a museum operated by members of the Parkersburg Council of the Telecomm Pioneers in Parkersburg, W.Va.
Having a working landline puts her in select company. In an increasingly digital United States, they're more and more a remnant of a time gone by, an anachronism of a now-unfathomable era when leaving your house meant being unavailable to callers.
Though as Thursday's outage shows, sometimes they can come in handy. They were suggested as part of the alternatives when people's cellphones weren't working.[2] The San Francisco Fire Department, for example, said on social media that people unable to get through to 911 on their mobile devices because of the outage should try using landlines.
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In the United States in 2024, that's definitely the exception.
TRACKING THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE CORD
According to the most recent estimates from the National Center for Health Statistics, about 73% of American adults in 2022 lived in households where there were only wireless phones and no landlines, while another 25% were in households with both. Barely over 1% had only landlines.
A bank of phones are seen at the Karnes County Residential Center July 31, 2014, in Karnes City, Texas. If this week’s crippling AT&T network outage showed anything, it’s that landlines have practically reached urban legend status in today’s America.
Contrast that to estimates from early 2003, where fewer than 3% of adults lived in wireless-only households, and at least 95% lived in homes with landlines, which have been around since Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876.
Twenty years ago, landline phone service was the “bread and butter” for phone companies, said Michael Hodel, a stock analyst at Morningstar Research Services LLC who follows the telecom industry. Now, he said, “it's become an afterthought,” replaced by services like broadband internet access and its multiple ways of making voice contact with others.
In today's United States, landlines have practically reached the status of urban legend in a nation where connecting over mobiles with the people you want — at the exact moments you want, on the precise platforms you prefer — feels fundamental enough to be a Constitutional right.
Among most age groups, the large majority were wireless-only, except for those 65 and older, the only group where less than half were estimated to only use cellphones.
They're people like Rebecca Whittier, 74, of Penacook, New Hampshire. She has both types of lines but prefers to use a landline. She only got a basic cellphone in case of emergencies when she was away from home.
“I guess you’d call me old fashioned,” she said. “I’m not good with computers or electronics. So a landline's good.”
HOW AND WHEN DID THE SHIFT HAPPEN?
What drove the change? It was that shift from telephones being mainly for voice communication to becoming tiny, data-saturated computers that were carried around in our pockets, Hodel says.
Of particular significance: the introduction of Apple's first iPhone in 2007. The rise of the smartphone fundamentally changed people's relationships with the devices in their pockets. “I do think that was the big watershed moment was when smartphone adoption really started to take off,” Hodel said.
The introduction of a new technology into society has a blowback effect on the ones it is supplanting, said Brian Ott, a professor of communication and media at Missouri State University.
"Basically, the new technology trains us to alter our use of the old technology,” Ott said. “So even though the old technology hasn’t gone away, the logic of mobile telephony exists across our entire society today, even for people who still have landlines.”
Cellphone handsets are seen on display at the 2012 International Consumer Electronics show Jan. 13, 2012, in Las Vegas.
But the sometimes headlong rush to adopt new technologies can have its own problems, he said: “Anytime a new technology is introduced, there’s sort of a rapid adoption period before we understand the consequences."
The outage, he says, is a case in point. Even though it was resolved quickly, it raises questions about what would happen if a broader-scale event disrupted cellphones more widely in a world where landline phones are no longer as ubiquitous.
Hodel was skeptical, though, at the notion that people would be unsettled enough to bring landlines and additional phone bills back into their lives.
“Unless you really are faced with something dire, the odds of you actually being concerned enough to go out and do something about it that’s going to cost you some amount of money seems to be pretty low,” he said. “The service that we get where we’re connected the vast majority of the time, if not all the time, has been sufficient to keep people satisfied by and large.”
If nothing else, the outage made Mary Minshew of Bethesda, Maryland, who is in her 40s, feel better about the landline she and her husband have so far not gotten around to scrapping. They don't use it; they and their children all have cellphones. And if it actually rings, she figures it's a scam or sales call and doesn't answer.
But, she said, part of holding onto it was “out of this concern that you should always have a landline if something like this would ever happen. I mean, it’s rare. But something like that did happen.”
The history of the American phone book
The history of the American phone book
Once a mainstay of homes, businesses, and phone booths everywhere, the phone book has (mostly) gone the way of the dodo.
Spokeo[3] examined historical documents, news reports, and other sources to chronicle the American phone book's fascinating history.
Before search engines, GPS, and social media, people used phone books for phone numbers and addresses of local people and businesses. One of the earliest forms of data collection and public access, phone companies published the books—White Pages for residential and Yellow Pages for business—by city or district, including all phone company customers. Users had to pay a fee to remain unlisted.
Ushering in the demise of the phone book are the internet and mobile phones. With phone books being bulky and updated just once yearly, the regularly updated internet proved far more accurate and reliable. Meanwhile, a 2004 law stipulated that cell phone numbers may not be included in phone directories. That left just landlines in the directories, which quickly rendered them largely obsolete as more than 7 in 10 adults were wireless-only[4] by the end of 2022, according to National Center for Health Statistics survey data. Most phone companies stopped dropping the directories on doorsteps in the 2010s, although White Pages and Yellow Pages are available online.
Keep reading to learn more about the history of American phone books and where you can still access them today.
1878: First phone directory printed in Connecticut
Telegraph manager George Coy of New Haven, Connecticut, developed an exchange—the system that allows people to call each other—within a year of attending Alexander Graham Bell's demonstration of a new invention called the telephone. The world's first telephone exchange took place on Jan. 28, 1878.
Three weeks later, Coy published a list of New Haven's 50 phone subscribers (names of people and businesses only, as phone numbers didn't yet exist): the first-ever phone directory. The list swelled to more than 400 names by November of that year, necessitating a booklet with phone usage instructions, essays on phone technology, and advertisements.
1879: The arrival of telephone numbers
A Christmastime measles outbreak[5] in Lowell, Massachusetts, led to the invention of telephone numbers.
At the time, telephone subscribers had to ask an exchange operator, who had memorized the names of local subscribers, to physically connect the caller's line to that of the person being reached. In 1880, two of the four-person operator staff in Lowell contracted measles, leaving telephone company owners in a panic that they would lose business. Dr. Moses Greeley Parker, a company stockholder, suggested using a directory of numbers to identify customers rather than names, and the phone number was born.
1883: The Yellow Pages are invented
The business listings directory got its iconic look by accident in 1883 when a Cheyenne, Wyoming, printer ran out of white paper and made do with yellow paper instead. The look stuck; in 1886, Reuben H. Donnelley created what became known as the Yellow Pages for commercial listings.
The localized business directory organized companies by category and also sold ad space. The directories were distributed as standalone volumes as well as companion sections to residential directories (delineated with white pages).
1919: Rotary phones are introduced
As telephone use became widespread, call volume threatened to overwhelm the operators facilitating connections. In 1919, AT&T introduced phones with numbers on rotary dials that allowed phone owners to dial each other directly. Over the next several decades, rotary phones gradually phased out manual operations, which led to a reduction in operator jobs—an industry dominated by women.
The last city to convert to automated dialing was Avalon, California, in 1978.
1934: Communications Act requires public access to phone directories
The Communications Act of 1934 created the Federal Communications Commission to regulate the telephone, telegraph, and radio industries (and, later, newer technologies such as television and mobile phones). Language included in this act completely changed phone book distribution.
Before the act's passage, telephone companies only printed and published the names and phone numbers of their subscribers. With the new law stipulating that this information be publicly available, competing phone books were published and delivered to people's doorsteps.
1962: All-digit dialing begins in California
Early phone numbers consisted of a two-letter abbreviated exchange name plus five digits, like Murray Hill 5-9975[6], Lucy and Ricky Ricardo's phone number on "I Love Lucy." As phone lines became more popular—between 1942 and 1962, the number of phones in the U.S. grew 230%[7] to 76 million—telephone companies realized they would run out of phone numbers.
All-number calling was rolled out to replace exchanges with digits and allow for more phone number combinations. To the surprise of phone companies, customers fought "creeping numeralism[8]" in an attempt to save their beloved exchange prefixes.
In California, where the conversion started, protesters formed the Anti-Digit Dialing League, which sued Pacific Telephone[9] and won a temporary stoppage of the conversion. The California Public Utilities Commission rescinded its stoppage order in 1964, allowing progress to continue.
1993: Phone directory becomes available on CD
Before the internet made research easy, databases moved from paper to CD-ROMs. PhoneDisc put the entire country's phone books onto a set of five CD-ROMs and made it searchable. This eliminated the need to call directory assistance to get a phone number from another city or state and made tracking down phone numbers much faster.
1996: Telecommunications Act reaffirms public access to directories
Although technology propelled the telecom industry forward, old regulations remained in place for decades until President Bill Clinton signed the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the first major overhaul of the 1934 legislation.
The law was designed to promote more competition and innovation across the communications industry by removing barriers to entry and allowing companies to provide service in any market, which meant regional telephone companies were now allowed to offer long-distance service. But to do so, those companies had to comply with a 14-point checklist laid out in the act. This included an anti-discrimination stipulation for White Pages listings, in that they had to be comparable, no matter which carrier the consumer used.
1996: Yellow Pages gets a website
Before the internet, people turned to the Yellow Pages to find a business. But with the directory coming out just once a year, information became quickly outdated as the year went on.
When yellowpages.com[10] went live, local businesses could update information in real time so customers could always find the correct number to call.
2004: Congress bans wireless telephone directory
Unless you paid to be unlisted, landline numbers were automatically added to phone books. When companies tried to do the same with cell phone numbers, Congress passed an amendment to the Communications Act of 1934[11] to prevent a mobile phone book.
This was a departure from previous legislation that prioritized free access to information. Privacy protection was one of the main drivers of this ban, as mobile phone users had gone years with no directory and expected mobile numbers to be private. At the time, mobile service was usually charged by the call or minute; the bill aimed to prevent users from receiving unwanted calls and inflated phone bills.
2009: Movement to stop phone book delivery gains steam
Thanks to the 1984 breakup of AT&T, consumers started receiving piles of phone books—upwards of 10 per address in California[12]—from regional companies that all wanted their directories to be the most popular. People quickly tired of receiving so many phone books, particularly when mobile phones were becoming the phone of choice—in Ohio alone, about 3 in 5 phone numbers in use were cell phones[13], according to The Plain Dealer.
Over the next few years, many cities and states enacted legislation[14] to stop the automatic delivery of phone books.
Yellow Pages are still available in their physical form. Some businesses see the physical directory as a viable advertising tool to target those who don't use the internet and who may still rely on print directories—between 20% to 30% of people[15], according to Thryv, a phone book distributor.
Story editing by Nicole Caldwell and Elena Cox. Copy editing by Paris Close.
This story[16] originally appeared on Spokeo and was produced and distributed in partnership with Stacker Studio.
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References
- ^ an AT&T network outage (apnews.com)
- ^ alternatives when people's cellphones weren't working. (apnews.com)
- ^ Spokeo (www.spokeo.com)
- ^ 7 in 10 adults were wireless-only (www.cdc.gov)
- ^ Christmastime measles outbreak (atcaonline.com)
- ^ Murray Hill 5-9975 (lucydesi.com)
- ^ grew 230% (timesmachine.nytimes.com)
- ^ creeping numeralism (www.nytimes.com)
- ^ sued Pacific Telephone (www.latimes.com)
- ^ yellowpages.com (yellowpages.com)
- ^ amendment to the Communications Act of 1934 (www.congress.gov)
- ^ upwards of 10 per address in California (slate.com)
- ^ 3 in 5 phone numbers in use were cell phones (blog.cleveland.com)
- ^ enacted legislation (www.cbsnews.com)
- ^ between 20% to 30% of people (billypenn.com)
- ^ This story (www.spokeo.com)