My mom has the oldest copper wire phone line in the county . Many times when internet and cellular are down you can still make phone calls.Is there anyone who still uses a twisted pair old school landline anymore? Even all the older people I know with land lines still, are using their Internet provider and not an actual phone line.
The real reason landlines are dying is because phone companies and local governments have tried to make exorbitant profits off them and inversely have been killing DSL services in areas where no other real option exists.
There are also laws that prevent “creative use” of old landlines like obsolete the 56k data limit because of “ringer voltages “ which isn’t a thing anymore, due to modern tech that deals with static, copper should be good to about 50mb data caps, tons of latency but still better than the dialup you get 10 miles off the highway.
Not all that long ago my non-subsidized landline was $15/month, even at $9.99 a month they could make profit on landlines in most regions. When I dropped dsl and the landline I was near $40/month for just a local line.
16 of the last 20 years AT&T has actually made more profits on landlines than cellular. The strange dichotomy is that anywhere there is cellular there is most certainly landline to the towers as satellite links are expensive