Unfortunately, carriers are letting POTS rot.
It is arguably unreliable now in some places. My grandmother's land line (semi-rural Ohio) goes out every few months and it usually takes a week or so for them to fix it. When we talked to them at one point, they suggested she get a cell phone.
Just another example of how planning for quarterly reports causes massive value destruction.
I can only imagine the ghosts of old-school telco linemen rolling in their graves over this.
I keep meaning to do a deep-dive into public utility regulation here to see if the incumbent telcos are required to maintain that infrastructure. I'd actually have fun going out and photographing/geotagging damaged infrastructure if a court would actually compel the telco to do something about it.
The actual fix here is that we have to take a hard look and really decide if this is something worth keeping around. If it is, it needs massive ongoing subsidies. The market alone won’t fix it, because the economics simply aren’t there.