Who cares about reliability, it is not as if lives depend on it. /s
If I look at the availability of phone service in my home (German metro area, cable) it is way below anyone would gave dared to provide in the TDM/ISDN times. I strongly believe only the redundancies people have with also having a mobile phone has allowed this to continue with lives being lost and regulators clamping down.
I have had a landline phone fail--a tree fell over on the next block down and took the wires along. Also, many years ago, I was in a building where we found the phones would work without power, but they wouldn't ring. While waiting to go home, we would resort to "polling"--pick up a line and see whether anyone was on it.
If I look at the availability of phone service in my home (German metro area, cable) it is way below anyone would gave dared to provide in the TDM/ISDN times. I strongly believe only the redundancies people have with also having a mobile phone has allowed this to continue with lives being lost and regulators clamping down.