The Death of a Phone Line | The Dealer Download

For 150 years, one piece of technology quietly connected American homes and businesses: the phone line. It started in 1876 when Alexander Graham Bell called Thomas Watson from another room. Within decades, engineers had transformed that experiment into a communications network stretching across the United States. Copper became infrastructure. We built homes around it. Businesses depended on it. And eventually we connected far more than telephones to those lines… elevators, fire alarms, security systems, fax machines, emergency phones, gates and industrial equipment. Now we're dismantling the network. AT&T says fewer than 2% of its eligible customers still use legacy copper voice technology and plans to exit copper across the majority of its wireline footprint by the end of 2029. The FCC is also making it easier for carriers to retire aging copper networks. There's just one problem: The phone line is dying. The things we connected to it aren't. In this episode of The Dealer Download, powered by RS&I, Michael Shiverdecker traces the phone line from Alexander Graham Bell's first experiments through the rise of the nationwide telephone network, and into today's race to replace POTS infrastructure without losing the critical services that still depend on it. We'll look at why copper lasted so long, why maintaining it no longer makes economic sense, what businesses may not realize is still connected to it, and how technologies such as Ooma AirDial are allowing legacy equipment to survive even after the copper disappears. And then there's StarDial… Ooma's new home phone solution designed for Starlink customers in rural, remote and off-grid locations. Bell started by sending his voice across a room through a wire. Today, we can remove the wire entirely and keep the experience. That's the bigger lesson: technologies can disappear long before the need they served does. For Authorized Dealers, that creates an opportunity to help customers identify what still depends on aging POTS infrastructure and move those applications forward before the old line disappears underneath them. The phone line is dying. The phone call isn't. And neither are a surprising number of things we quietly connected to that line along the way. Subscribe to The Dealer Download for more conversations about telecom, sales, marketing and technology. Sources Smithsonian National Park Service Transcontinental Telephone Service — Engineering and Technology History Wiki FCC AT&T — Copper retirement and the 2029 transition AT&T — Upgrading Home Phone and Internet Customers From Copper Ooma — POTS Retirement Resource Hub Ooma AirDial — POTS replacement Ooma — AirDial Technical White Paper Ooma StarDial — September 15, 2026 Ooma — StarDial for Starlink Announcement Youtube and Internet Archive Sources https://archive.org/details/90314-her... YouTube_Media_xDy2tHCPdk8_MOBILE-TELEPHONES-1940s-BELL-TELEPHONE-MOVIE-EARLY-CELL-PHONE-MOBILE-TELEPHONE-S_001_480p YouTube_Media_xJ1fKFqt7qU_AT-T-Archives-Switchboards-Old-and-New-Bonus-Edition_001_720p YouTube_Media_s9aThqUnGO0_1950s-Switchboard-Telephone-Operator_001_1080p YouTube_Media_d0zsqcP6hF8_Hello-operator-Ladies-work-the-telephone-swtichboard-archive-Daily-Mail_001_240p YouTube_Media_OQGgWYbTsq0_POTS-Lines-Facts-Risks-and-Future-Options_001_1080p https://archive.org/details/uncommon-... https://dn790002.ca.archive.org/0/ite... https://dn790002.ca.archive.org/0/ite... YouTube_Media_ePrXw8rvPIU_What-is-Ooma-AirDial_001_1080p YouTube_Media_Ps9Q7kA2Mds_Ooma-AirDial-MultiPath-Technology_001_1080p YouTube_Media_RDH2xtc18B4_Business-Phone-Services-Ooma-Office_001_1080p #DealerDownload #RSIInc #Ooma #POTS #POTSReplacement #CopperRetirement #Landline #PhoneLine #Telecom #Telecommunications #AlexanderGrahamBell #Telephone