I hope telecoms die a slow death like cable (TV) companies. with 5G coming soon, plus this robo-call epidemic of late, maybe that will push a critical mass of people to VOIP and leave this sorry industry (with their silly litany of technical-sounding acronyms) in the dust.

I'm not a facebook fan, but I wouldn't be entirely against "Facebook Phone" (as in, a drop-in replacement for dialing numbers now that works as an appliance, not a shitty "add-on" for fb messenger) if they moved in to disrupt the industry. Of course privacy-be-damned at that point, but it's the lesser of two evils IMO.