How Portability Ruined the Telephone (2015)
tl;dr 1) The choice of digital protocol for PSTN was sub-optimal; 2) landline phones are installed in areas which tend to be quiet and private; 3) the author likes holding a receiver handset, and doesn&#x27;t consider modern smartphones or earbuds as good replacements.<p>None of these are really issues.<p>1) The author invokes the old myth that &quot;digital audio must be sampled, therefore it&#x27;s lower quality&quot;, whilst conveniently ignoring the facts that a) that sampling can be performed to any degree of precision you like and b) those samples can be reproduced exactly at the other end, unlike analogue signals which constantly degrade. Saying that the digital protocol is &quot;permanent&quot; is basically a lie; the fact it&#x27;s digital, and being consumed by general purpose computers, means it is far easier to upgrade, provide capability-discovery, compress, tunnel through older protocols, etc. than the analogue protocols the author is implicitly comparing to.<p>2) Mobile phones are mobile. They can be moved to quiet and private locations. The author laments the loss of landline telephones installed in booths, at restaurants, etc. whilst ignoring how much it cost to install and maintain them. If a business&#x2F;organisation were to spend money on providing customer phone service, it would make more sense to install a cellular repeater than a bank of landlines.<p>3) Many handsets are available for use with smartphones.<p>I think the only problems with mobile phones compared to landlines are social. For example, if a landline isn&#x27;t answered then the owner might be out; if a mobile isn&#x27;t answered then the owner doesn&#x27;t like you; if a mobile goes to voicemail faster than normal, then the owner must have pressed the reject button; etc. These just depend on expectations: if you jump through hoops to be available for calls and answer them as quickly as possible, no matter the inconvenience or situation, then you&#x27;re setting a high bar for yourself. On the other hand, if you only use a phone when it&#x27;s convenient, and have it switched off or rejecting calls the rest of the time, then nobody can make those social inferences.