Indeed, sadly that is mostly gone and buried now. Before the phone company was basically completely responsible for keeping your phone working.

Now keeping your phone working requires both parties, the vendor and the customer to keep stuff happy to make the phone work.

Yes I've visited the battery banks in make exchanges in the Netherlands in the early 2000s. Phone exchange equipment runs on 48V DC for this reason. I've even been to relay-based phone exchanges that still existed in those days, though they were rare. Pulse only. It was weird being in a dark building sounding like it was infested by crickets. Really spooky.