phones should disappear

Why do we still have phones? That technology should be eliminated altogether. There are so many things wrong with it, and we already have better options. We have various internet technologies that exceed traditional phone capabilities. About half of my job time is spent on our old phone system. Looking at project ideas for the upcoming year, half of them are also phone related. Please, when can we retire this ancient technology and use something far more flexible?

phone numbers:
I reprogram our phone database at work to make adjustments for undialable phone numbers. Here in the Twin Cities metro, the area codes 763 and 651 are supposed to be local phone calls with no toll charges. Except that a few rapidly growing areas are considered long distance prefixes even within those area codes. This exception leaves our PBX system unable to route any calls to those destinations. I have to program a rule exception that permits us to dial 1 to allow long distance charges to those destination numbers. Let's just move the internet to IP6 already, then every technological device under the sun can get its own unique number. Phone book listings transform into internet nameserver lookups. The phrase "long-distance call" becomes irrelevant. Every device within a household can share the same base address. Add more "phones" on a whim within your base address, and do so at no charge.

power:
One argument for the old phone system is that it included its own electrical power. Ethernet these days, however, can do the same. If my calculations on these core values are correct:

63.25 mA * 1000 = 0.06325 A
52.5 V * 0.06325 A = 3.32 W

I find that the old phone system delivers 3.3 Watts of power. Ethernet today, however, is able to deliver 12.9 Watts. There are probably big differences in the distance they can deliver that power, but honestly I don't see what the fuss is about. Phones don't need to include their own power transformer brick just to connect them to the internet data line. Also, USB devices when in suspended mode will draw a miniscule amount of power (see page 3), so I don't think the phantom load will break the green technology goal that we should aspire to achieve.

speed:
I think the maximum data transfer rate of old analog lines capped out around 33.6 kbits / second. Companies like ours use a digital phone network instead of analog. I can't find any documentation that explains the speed of this network. I do easily find reference to the 4.8 kbits / second that each phone allows for a serial attached device. The main network is surely faster than that, but I don't know how much. In contrast, gigabit ethernet is commonplace, and that technology is orders of magnitude faster.

faxes:
While we're ending the old phone technology, let's finally end fax technology too.  Instead of faxes, transmit PDF documents by email.  It offers higher resolution and (because of the speed increase mentioned above) would still be faster to send a document.

wiring:
My biggest objection to phone technology, however, is the duplicate infrastructure that it requires.  We already have buildings wired for ethernet with all of the benefits described above.  Now, in addition to that wiring and equipment, we also have to have a second system in place to support the old phone technology.  It's such a wasteful and pointless expense that I boggle at the thought of how much money is wasted by industry in America to keep this inferior technology in use.

cell phones:
I mention these points now because my pre-paid phone expired earlier this week.  I pay $100 up front to Verizon, and the balance is good for a year.  They deduct $1 each day the phone is involved in a call (send or receive) plus $0.10 per minute.  I've never used up all the money on such a plan, but this year I had a record $93.65 go to waste.  I don't use phones.  Really, why does anyone use phone technology when internet service is ubiquitous?  I don't keep the cell phone on my body, and it sometimes spends weeks without battery charge before I remember to plug it into the recharger.

Now, it's time for me to go make another $100 payment on a phone that seems mandatory even though I don't use it.