While you may think that phone service is improving, it has decreased in quality in several areas.
The majority of “business phone lines” today are run through VoIP systems using the same internet backbone, so if your broadband goes down, your phone service will go down with it. As a result, service outages today create a more severe impact on businesses than 20 years ago. The increased prices for telephone services are due largely to bundled services — support, contracts, and equipment — which do not have the reliability to support the cost of service. The typical price quote from AT&T reflects this trend of added costs for equipment and VoIP systems.
Some practical solutions include separating the internet and telephone services by using different providers, including a backup internet line (5G is available), and ensuring that customers can transfer their calls to their mobile phones when their regular telephone services are down. Although these solutions may take more effort and resources from the user, redundancy has become a necessity for business telephone services.