Telephony

I wonder how long I'll be able to keep my standard 2-strand copper wire to the pole telephones?

I don't have a cell phone.  Or smart phone.  Or what have you.

There is a chance it will be all data wifi when I eventually DO get around to getting one, and one need a 'telephone' account through a cell tower anyway.

But it's only a matter of time before the phone company says that the wires overhead that feed my house phone are simple not being used so there is no way to use regular 80s era house phones.  Unless I put some doohickey in line that will pull signals out of the air and feed THOSE to my phone.  But I won't have a wire connected directly to a switching station.  It simply will not be a service they will be able to offer.  Keeping those wires up and energized and repaired costs money and it's easier to keep the tower nodes running.

It'll be like when my grandparents were screwed because dial service was eclipsed by touch tone only in the early 90s.  Ironically, it would be easy to accept dial service now that the switches are all digitized and not so electro-mechanical...

Where am I going with this?  Telephony was invented, what?  150 years ago?  It is a mature technology.  At age 175 it might be totally gone, the way of the telegraph and typewriters and snail mail catalog sales.  But we'll still be issuing AR patterns to our soldiers.  Probably.