Maybe you never called the other side of the world in the 80s, latency was easily 2 seconds! And the price..

Because copper wires could carry enough power to make a landline work when the mains electricity was off due to a power cut

Edit: also domestic routers are buggy and unreliable and need to be restarted regularly

For residential users in Finland, the last-mile replacement for POTS is not fibre but cellular, at least where phone calls are concerned.

The UK is currently going through the analogue copper landline shutdown, with a scheduled cutoff of Jan 2027 (already pushed back once). The gov website says:

> ""Analogue networks have been in operation for decades and have reached the end of their serviceable life. The telecoms industry is finding it difficult to source the parts required to maintain or repair connections as suppliers are no longer manufacturing them. Ofcom, the telecommunications regulator, reported that 2023 saw 20% more service incidents on the PSTN compared to 2022, resulting in a 60% increase in the number of service hours lost to customers

...

If you have other devices connected to your phone line, such as alarm systems, telecare devices or fax machines, you should take steps to ensure they will continue to function correctly.

...

The analogue landline carries a low voltage power connection directly from the telephone exchange, which is sufficient to power some basic corded handsets without needing to plug them into the wall. This means that in the event of a local power cut, these corded handsets will continue to function as long as the telephone exchange still has power.

Digital landlines cannot carry a power connection, which means handsets and routers must be powered from your home power supply, and they will not function in a power cut unless you have a backup power system such as a battery or generator. Telecare devices connected to a digital landline network may not work during a power cut.

Communications providers are required by Ofcom to take all necessary measures to ensure uninterrupted access to emergency organisations for their customers, including in the event of a power cut."""

- https://www.gov.uk/guidance/uk-transition-from-analogue-to-d...

Right now, Openreach are maintaining two entirely different local loop networks, one baseband and other IP. My experience of their PON network is that it's rock solid, and that's clearly where all the effort is going - it's much easier to keep connectivity if you can link your PON headend to the exchange via multiple fibre paths so when street works sever one cable the other keeps working, unlike with legacy copper-to-the-exchange.

They very much want to cut that back to one; big cost savings. And there are eventually going to be (hundreds of?) millions to be made from tearing the copper out from underneath the pavements and selling it, unless copper thieves get there first.

IP-only != fibre. Try reading my comment above in its entirety. You can also read this for further enlightenment about SOGEA:

https://www.btwholesale.com/products-and-services/data/sogea...

I wish I had a link for the other thing, but it was deep inside some Openreach site that Google don't seem to have access to.

There are multiple options, including internet from mobile phone providers and satellite internet. The affordability and speeds are good enough that it's not a major problem.

That said, there are devices that depend on the old phone network that need to be replaced, such as alarm systems for vulnerable people, but the risk of vulnerable people that can't switch to VoIP services is fairly low, especially as this switchover has been known about for a long time.

Cell phone.

ADSL is designed to use frequencies beyond the range of human hearing.