The only thing cell phones have on copper land lines is portability. In all other ways they suck. I think we only tolerate this because most of us have completely forgotten how much better land lines were, or we never experienced them to begin with. The first big hit to phones came with the cordless models. No longer comfortable to hold against your ear, the earpieces got flat or even convex, and mashing it up against your head made for an unpleasant converation. But hey, we got rid of cords! And then the change to cell phones, with their tiny fraction of available bandwidth, terrible sound quality, high latency, high failure rate, etc.
The astonishing thing is that bandwidth isn't a big deal now, and we could have improved basically all aspects of mobile calls to be within spitting distance of what we used to have 30 years ago.
No wonder people don't like to talk on the phone any more.
> The only thing cell phones have on copper land lines is portability. In all other ways they suck
Isn't that a little like saying "The only thing boats have over cars is that they can go on water. In all other ways they suck"? Portability is the entire point. Even in the "good old days" most people would have accepted nearly any tradeoff for the ability to carry even the simplest global communications device with them.
The astonishing thing is that bandwidth isn't a big deal now, and we could have improved basically all aspects of mobile calls to be within spitting distance of what we used to have 30 years ago.
No wonder people don't like to talk on the phone any more.