The country's largest landline phone company-Priceangels.com

In late June, New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman filed an emergency petition with state regulators to stop Verizon from replacing copper lines with alternatives in the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York. He says seasonal residents who find their i9500 S4 phone lines don't work at their summer homes are steered by Verizon to its Voice Link wireless product. Only if the customer forcefully refuses will Verizon restore the copper phone line, he says. Verizon says Voice Link is just an option available to customers.

In New Jersey, state regulators are talking to Verizon about Mantoloking but haven't approved the landline-to-wireless switch that Verizon has already started. It could, at least in theory, deny Verizon's application and force it to rewire copper phone lines back into the town.

In Washington, the Federal Communications Commission is looking at an application from the country's largest landline phone company, AT&T Inc. AT&T isn't dealing with storm damage, so it has the leisure of taking a longer view. It wants to explore what a future without phone lines will look like by starting trials in yet-to-be-decided areas.fR5sqf24

"We need kind of a process where we can figure out what we don't know," says Bob Quinn, one of AT&T's top lobbyists in Washington. "The trouble is not going to be identifying the issues everybody can see. It's going to be finding the unexpected issues that you have to conquer."

At Public Knowledge, Feld agrees with AT&T's deliberative approach. Among the issues that need to be looked at, he says, is whether consumer protections that apply to landline phone service should apply to whatever replaces it. For instance, if a consumer misses a monthly payment, phone companies are prohibited from cutting landline phone service right away."There are all kinds of state and federal rights around your phone bill ... which don't apply to these competitive alternatives," Feld says.

Sean Lev, the FCC's general counsel, said in a blog post that "we should do everything we can to speed the way while protecting consumers, competition, and public safety." But he also points out that most i9500 S4 1:1 phone companies aren't set to retire their landline equipment immediately. The equipment has been bought and paid for, and there's no real incentive to shut down a working network. He thinks phone companies will continue to use landlines for five to 10 years, suggesting that regulators have some time to figure out how to tackle the issue.

AT&T would like to have all its landline phone equipment turned off by 2020. Verizon's Maguire envisions a gradual phase-out, starting right now.