Copper landline 'forcibly' taken away

I received a call from a Telkom person saying that they were doing away with copper lines in our area and we needed to migrate to the new wireless-based virtual landline immediately. It was all very rushed and I agreed as I didn't want to forego my landline which is good if the electricity goes down. Amazingly the very next day a guy arrived and installed it. I wasn't there at the time but was hugely impressed only to find when I'd set it up and tried to make a phone call every time I pressed a number it would input a double number. ***77 etc. I tried everything and then phoned a friend who had one and he told me to 'get rid of it'. He told me the call quality was terrible, that DATA was going missing from the SIM card, and a whole litany of worrying things. I relised that this was not a 'Landline' as they had pitched it, it was a ruse to get you to buy more and more data. I went to a TELOM shop the next day and told them I had changed my mind and wanted to return the unused phone (still in its box). They said that couldn't do anything but told me to cancel on-line and just keep the phone--no charge which I duly did. A month later the line was gone, I have a stupid phone and, now, no way of calling my aged parents for a long slow conversation. Sadly missed and with a feeling of being slightly violated, I wondered who was paying for all these free phones. To make matters worse: my neighbour still has hers and had been away during the flurry of copper line activity. Hers still works and no-one has threatened her with disconnection.