By lllinois Radio Network

SPRINGFIELD – If you have a landline, chances are it’s not from the phone company. More likely it’s provided by your cable company. And that’s why AT&T is asking Illinois lawmakers to help roll back a decades-old requirement that forces it to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on technology that most people don’t want and don’t use.

Just about 10 percent of people in Illinois’ biggest cities have what AT&T spokesman Eric Robinson calls “old phones.”

“There are modern landlines,” Robinson said. “Modern landlines are the type of phone service that someone uses if they subscribe to home phone service from their cable company.”

Robinson said those landlines are here to stay.

“Old phones,” Robinson said, are becoming more scarce each year. These are the lines running from a pole outside into the house, rather than the modern landlines, which are provided by cable companies.

“What AT&T is supportive of is a modern communications law that would allow the state to no longer require lots of investment in that old network that only about 10 percent of households use any more,” Robinson said.

Robinson said AT&T spends about $1 billion a year on phone lines and networks. At least 20 percent of that is going to “old phone” technology.

“What we’re talking about here are hundreds of millions of dollars, instead of going to a technology that customers have essentially abandoned, that investment could go into the networks that are driving the economy today,” Robinson said.

Robinson said the change would impact people in almost every large city in Illinois, except for Bloomington-Normal, which is not part of AT&T’s territory.

If you’re one of the 10 percent with an old phone, don’t worry, Robinson said, no one will lose their phone service immediately.

If lawmakers approve the rollback, Robinson said federal regulators still have to make their own decision.

Robinson said 19 of 21 states that had similar “old phone” requirements have already ended their mandates.