DETROIT – Linda Joanette uses her landline home phone all the time and loves it. Don't even get her sister started talking about hers.
"Air, water, landline. Those are necessities," Marilyn Dragan said. "I don't ever want to be without a landline."
New legislation in Lansing is circulating that would eliminate landline service in Michigan by 2017.
That idea does not fly with Marilyn and Linda.
"I don't understand who even thinks this is a good idea," Joanette said.
But don't most people mainly use their cellphones anyway?
"In my house, we don't even have a landline phone anymore," said Chelsea Litton, of Wyandote.
"We have [a landline phone] to use the fax machine and the alarm system and that's it," said Kathy Kakoc, of Southfield. "I can't remember when I used to to talk to someone."
According to AT&T, 6.8 million people in Michigan had landlines in their homes in 2001. By 2012, that number dropped to 2.6 million people. Conversely, their wireless business has skyrocketed in that time.
A spokesperson for the company said it's expensive to keep up with the antiquated landline system as it was created more than 50 years ago.
This legislation would simply allow them to transfer everything to an Internet-based system. He said customers could still plug in at home like they always have.