Amazon and Google may bring back home phones

When was the last time you actually talked to someone on a home phone? It's no secret that landline phone service is on the way out -- a recent survey found over half of American households had ditched their home phones -- but home-based phone service might not be dead just yet. If a report from the Wall Street Journal holds any weight, home telecommunication is just evolving. After a series of comments from anonymous Amazon and Google sources, it looks like the companies are making moves to offer their smart home speaker hubs, Amazon's Echo and Google's Home, as phone line replacements. The shift to phone service via smart assistant makes sense.