Monkey

In the UK the old copper landline is being retired. From January 2027, the analogue phone network that runs over those wires is due to be switched off nationwide. After that, a traditional wall socket phone will not work unless it has been moved onto digital voice over broadband. The copper removal is expected to run into the "2030s" as fibre takes over. Officially this is because the kit is worn out, expensive to keep, and voice can now ride on the same network as the internet. Homes will lose a phone that still works in a power cut, digital calls are easier to tap or shut off, a big prize is scrap copper, emptying thousands of exchanges, forcing everyone onto paid broadband. We swapped the landline ourselves by biting the apple, or by becoming an Android and only afterwards asked what we had given up, a line that belonged to the house and nowhere else. Being reachable every hour is not how a nervous system was built to live. Perhaps that is why so many people walk around wound up, not only because the copper is going, but because we agreed to carry the whole world in a pocket and called it progress.