Good bye copper POTS

"I can easily counter predict that there will be plenty of landlines left in the country by the end of Obama's term, and if he goes eight years, there will still be plenty of good old copper dial tone…" Ted Wallingford

"The reason copper-POTS will disappear is simple. Use of POTS landlines are declining. Worse, the most lucrative voice customers are the first to drop their landlines in favour of VoIP" Tom Evslin

I am with you Tom.
As I, in spite of the fact that my only IT background is my husband, am with everything which is new (and is worth of course).
But I am with Ted Wallingford too.
It is a general perception that product development and consumer acceptance are now occurring in a fraction of the traditional time as if anything could change in the blink of an eye...
While product development cycles have become noticeably shorter, consumers do not operate on Internet time. New technologies do not diffuse notably more rapidly than they used to.
Because technology doesn't really go with the mass.
There is always a restricted number of people "New lovers" and the mass of the people "Habit lovers".
And the Habit lovers are usually people of the old generation, the one that goes under the name of "boom generation" which includes the bigger number of individuals.
Internet telephony (VoIP) already in 1995 it was predicted to bring imminent doom for the established phone companies, but it is barely noticeable today.
In spite of Skype's success, the "Habits lovers" still prefer the traditional phone, no, they prefer the cell phone.
It is like a traditional phone and you can use it everywhere.
I would say that Skype in one way did more harm than good.
It spread the VoIP, but since its quality is not always good, its availability not always available, its security very low, it gave the false idea that all VoIP is like Skype.
While it is not.
If you introduce on the market a competitor which is worse than the service you compete with, you will loose the chance to show consumers the real alternative.
The Internet is a potent communication tool, offering unprecedented volume, speed, and reach of information. It does change everything, just like the telegraph, the telephone, and electricity did.
It is just that people do not operate on Internet time, and so change is slower than the enthusiasts predicted.