Yeah, I worked for a credit card processor when most businesses used landlines for their connection and I couldn’t tell you the number of times we had clients call to bitch about how they’d started internet service so, among other things, they could use VOIP to stop paying for phone service. Now, suddenly, it’s taking three or four connections before the transaction goes through and it’s all our fault so we need to fix it.
I just remembered something. I was trying to figure out why I had to put in my address with my cell phone. But that was for wi-fi calling, as apparently that doesn’t give the location.
Still, that seems like a bad idea, as I can use wi-fi calling outside my home. It’s on automatically anywhere that I can connect to wi-fi. Maybe I should switch to “prefer cellular,” so it will at least only use wi-fi as a last resort.
(I can’t turn it off entirely or I wouldn’t get phone calls in my house. The signal is weak enough out here that my house nearly blocks it.)
The last time I had a landline was when I lived in a college dorm. That was roughly 20 years ago.
I had to have a cell phone for my first job out of college (the company gave you a monthly stipend to help cover your bill if you used your personal cell), and pretty quickly figured there was no point in paying extra for a landline.
My parents, who are in their 60s, have both had their own cell phones for years, but finally did away with their landline last year. Did make me a bit sad, though, to see my childhood phone number gone.
Meanwhile, my parents have two POTS landlines (one of which has had the same number since 1970 or so, so it’s widely known), two cell phones and a VOIP line tied to their cable service. Five lines for two people in their eighties, compared to the single landline with one handset when I was growing up.
After our father died, my brother was able to transfer the house’s landline number, which had been used for over 50 years, to his cell phone.
I’m 33 (so not quite qualifying as young by OPs standard) and I still have a landline. Well, I have a landline number at least - cellphone numbers here have different prefixes than the geographical “landline” prefixes.) I used to have a real landline because it was required to have DSL internet. When fibre-optic came in, I dropped the DSL and the landline; but I ported the number over to a VoIP service. So now my “landline” is actually a VoIP app on my cellphone.
E911 is the system that lets a 911 dispatcher know your mobile phones location. A brief browsing of that article says that when on an emergency call your phone will send its location to a server, which then gets queried by the 911 system to give the operator the information.
That address is a last ditch fallback. If 911 can’t get location information from you, your phone, or your mobile carrier, then try that address.