Since when? I haven't had a phone line for 10 years. Yet I'm here.

Really? I'll elucidate. There hasn't been a national copper interconnect (POTS) for a long time now. You might, have copper to the house but after that it's fiber all the way down. AT&T and all the large carriers leverage this to carry your voice traffic as data and on top of that can carry 'internet data' and whatever else.

With AT&T goes the data, even if you haven't had a 'phone line' in a long time.

No one says ATT doesn't still get some money. But wouldn't you rather be the one sending the final customer a bill for 50/mo?

There's a reason wireless companies have been fighting vigorously to avoid becoming dumb pipes.

Are you serious?

That's like saying you it's better to own a website, rather then own Amazon EC2 or <insert any datacenter here>.

Yeah, I'm serious. I'd rather own Facebook than the servers it operates on.