Is the Landline Doomed?

FCC study: Landlines are going away.

Here's an interesting article noting that an advisory council to the FCC has determined the public switched telephone network (PSTN, better known as your old-timey landline) is fading away.  An obsolescence horizon is recommended to be established by government at about six years from now.

Previously I posted a how-to for replacing your landline with a simple and vastly cheaper home Voice-over-Internet (VoIP) service: How to Roll-Your-Own with VoIP for Massive Phone Savings.

Good timing.

But why wait for the inevitable?  If (per my own family's example) you can save about $30 a month by taking advantage of today's marvelous VoIP wholesalers, you can save more than $2,000 between now and the deadline recommended to the FCC... if you take the plunge soon.

Check out my how-to:

• If you have decent broadband service and are just a little geeky, you can try VoIP out today using a smartphone and your existing WiFi (or your PC even if it's wired to the wall) for a pittance.  
• To go all the way, as we did, and replace your costly monthly landline service with a VoIP adapter (so you can use your regular phones) requires a capital investment of all of $50 or so, plus another $20 if you want to keep your current phone number.  
• You can go even further and replace your current phones with digital ones instead of using an analog-phone adapter.  (We'll consider doing that when our perfectly serviceable wireless handsets crap out in another year or two, as they do.  By then the cost for WiFi SIP handsets should be more reasonable.  For now, the cost of the Cisco PAP2T + a good multi-handset wireless analog phone is unbeatable.)

There's a host of options and many benefits.

Do it.  Before the government forces you to.