Real landlines are a rarity these days, most stuff is VoIP. In any case, I was talking about getting an emergency call to the person wearing a pager (as in the case of doctors or other on call people), not the reliability of calling 911/999/112/whatever. Any mobile device is going to be more useful than a landline in that situation because the doctor could easily be out at the shops or having lunch. Pagers were invented for that particular scenario.