History of Landlines

In the early 19th century, landline phone systems were invented by twisting two copper wires together through an outlet in the home or office, which has been relatively unchanged throughout the years. Large wired telephone polls are placed all over the place, and also utilize switch boxes. When you make your phone call, the signal has to travel along these lines, hit a switch box, and continue on to the line of the other person. The biggest pro of using a landline these days is that there is little disruption to these lines, unless you run into outages during a storm or extreme low temperatures.

Some cons of using landlines is the extra wiring that is sometimes required, especially in larger companies that use multiple phones and lines. Landlines use Public Switched Telephone Network, which are responsible for carrying voice signals from one location to another. For businesses, extra wiring may be necessary because they need to rely on special hardware called Private Branch Exchange, which connects internal extensions to public networks. This is why companies can incur so many costs associated with implementing a traditional landline phone system. There may also be extra costs associated with international calls, obtaining caller ID, and having multiple lines on each individual phone.

There is also a current feeling that landlines have become essentially obsolete, since most communication is conducted via computers or cell phones. With the introduction of the cell phone, more and more people have begun to do away with their old landlines, both at work and at home. Especially in the age of Covid-19, more and more companies are utilizing platforms like Microsoft Teams and Zoom in order to conduct business calls and meetings, which requires an internet connection and a computer. No longer are we tied to an old-fashioned phone with a cord wrapped around our finger, we have moved forward to a new digital age where almost everyone uses freeform technology like Zoom and cell phones to communicate with everyone in their lives, whether at work or in the comfort of their home.

There may be some hesitancy to try out a new system, especially if you are one of the many people out there that do not consider themselves computer savvy. Landlines are the simplest form of phone system to use, but can have some issues of its own. There can be issues with call clarity, which is not a problem with a VoIP system. VoIP systems are very well known for their high quality call clarity and call sound. The biggest hurdle in implementing a VoIP system is getting used to making the computer your new phone, but most computer users should not have any issues with making this leap into VoIP technology.