In Israel you can own a kosher cell phone. This means that you have constant monthly payment with bank of minutes you can use calling other kosher phones and landline phones. The phone itself is disabled of making pictures, surfing, sending SMSs and so on. The calls to non-kosher phones are much more costly. Kosher cell phones are backeneded by rabinical authorities. (There are some more details about this (could be found here), I'm just presenting the main idea.)
From the above I conclude that common practice in Israel is that any landline phone is equal to kosher cellular phone. From this I can not derive what was when landlines were first introduced, but anyway I suppose they were not criticized.