Communication is explicitly a more than one person endeavor. If the other party isn’t willing or able to use signal, then sms might be the required option. Signal removed their SMS functionality from their app.

There are perfectly valid reasons to use Google messages instead of signal.

There was a checkbox to mute the noise on the dialer. We had 2 phone lines, so I’ve been terminally online since windows 3.11, and I very rarely heard heard the dial up noise