This week’s cellphone outage makes it clear: In the United States, landlines are languishing

Cellphone hand sets are seen on display at the 2012 International Consumer Electronics show in Las Vegas. As the Thursday, Feb 22, 2024, AT&T cellphone outage shows, sometimes landline telephones can come in handy, and were suggested as part of the alternatives when people’s cellphones weren’t working. — AP

NEW YORK: When her cellphone’s service went down this week because of an AT&T network outage, 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.”