It is insane how reliable landlines are, though. When the power goes out, you can make "candles" by connecting a 0.47 uF capacitor to a LED leg and connect both ends to the red and green phone wires; there's enough voltage to power a couple of them without the phone going off the hook.

In an emergency, the lines don't get clogged like cell phone towers, and the Telco infrastructure is much more protected than wireless (you'd have to bomb a pretty big building with no windows to take out a small area's lines). It's probably fine in the grand scheme that we lose these properties. We'll just reinvent them later if it turns out we miss them.