Norway: Landlines will no longer be supported

Around 2012-2013, my 5&#x2F;6-ish year old daughter found an old wired phone I kept around and she was astonished when I told her that wires used to connect phones. &quot;You need wires to phone call? But why!&quot;<p>A few years back, in India, competition amongst the ISP&#x2F;Telephone providers were heating up and everything became so cheap and readily available. I got Jio for fun, and then Airtel in hope to stop them from calling&#x2F;texting&#x2F;spamming me. Now, I have two additional Internet fibers coming in besides the primary, and they came with free (I think, Unlimited) phone calls. So, I added two wired phones and kept them.<p>Now, my 2nd daughter (5-ish year old) is intrigue and knows she can talk to her grandparents on the other end. She is brimming with triumph and fun that she knows the &quot;numbers to grandma and grandpa.&quot;<p>Growing up, phones were a luxury and I know the ins-out of the only telephone exchange in our tiny home-town, where I know quite a few top executives (friends&#x27; father&#x2F;uncles). I love the nostalgia of having a wired phone and I want that rotary ones.

In the UK, unless you&#x27;re on virgin (there might be a few others I&#x27;m unaware of), you&#x27;re pretty much forced to have a landline for which you&#x27;re charged line rental, even if you don&#x27;t or will never use it.

You will never forget the numbers. Bloody waste of memory bits.<p>113 (1952) ; Human operator on small island<p>444303 (1958)<p>782502 (1966)<p>1484997 (1978) ; My first personal phone, It was also routed to my cell phone until 2018.

getting misty-eyed thinking of all the kids who&#x27;ll never become phone phreaks. man, early technology was fun.<p>maybe we should bring back phreaking just as a game. is there such a thing as a hacker museum? we could set up a mini exchange, payphones, pbx, conf lines, etc and let kids hack it. and there would be no website; you&#x27;d have to connect to the BBS to get information, or join a party line.

&gt; In connection with the remediation of the copper network, we have been clear that no one should lose their phone. Either we move them to <i>fiber</i> or mobile. For some very few people, we have been forced to find special solutions.

Tbh it came as a bit of shock for me. Purely because of the sentimental value. I haven&#x27;t had a landline in almost 20 years but I still remember the phone number we grew up with. Once I start a family I also thought &quot;the family&quot; needed a phone number, not just a phone number to each person. I guess that is still possible over mobile phone lines though. I was surprised nevertheless.

We all stil have a telephone pole in the yard - during the last refurbishment I asked the contractor to cut the wire from my office jack to just short of telephone box - cap it and loop it and use a cable tie to put it on the pole.<p>We now have an underground fibre to all the homes in our suburb.<p>US Robotics will always be special to me and nothing to do with robots.

In NZ, landlines are also on their way out.<p>It&#x27;s not quite unsupported, but you can&#x27;t sign up for a new copper landline plan unless there is no mobile coverage and no fibre coverage at your property. Otherwise, for anyone who really wants a &quot;landline&quot; you are getting VOIP over fibre or VOIP over mobile broadband.<p>87% of population have access to the new fibre network, and the old copper network is just redundant and unmantained in most built-up areas. Chorus recent started actively forcing remaining customers off it in some areas.<p>Personally, I&#x27;ve been without a landline for 10 years, and even my parents got rid of their landline a few years back. It&#x27;s just cheaper to use a mobile phones instead (and in NZ, mobile phones come with the additional benefit of never receiving spam calls)

Norway also shut down their old radio network. Which was sad to me as a history nerd because I remember reading about the heroic people who smuggled radios in briefcases and in attics just to bring news to people during german occupation.

The UK is getting rid of the copper network as well (I think originally it was supposed to be 2025? But I think it’s been pushed back)<p>There is already a push to not sell phone lines that support voice, so you just get a line that supports broadband only, getting more people used to voip - but there are so many independent ISPs popping up (now that the by ducting is available to use) that they are chucking full fibre left right and centre.<p>Will be interesting to see how it plays out regarding emergency calls when it’s fully switched off.

In the event of a disaster (earthquake, flood, blizzard) is voip infrastructure more or less &#x27;fragile&#x27; than a copper landline?<p>I assume this deprication will probably be cost related but I am curious about the implications on the emergency side of things.

New Zealand is also getting rid of its copper network -- I held on to my connection for as long as possible. I still have it, they haven&#x27;t actually shut it off yet, but they have warned me that it&#x27;s coming in some number of months.

I wonder how it will be for services that depend on landlines like fax.<p>fax is still used at all medical centres, pharmacies, hospitals, etc. would this influence those businesses?

Future generations will wonder why do we call the mobile phones “mobile”