A wireline telephony instrument for wirelessly receiving and displaying data messages allows a wireline telephone to wirelessly receive data messages, although the wireline telephony instrument does not wirelessly receive or transmit calls. The data messages may include text, images, and other types of multimedia data. Wireless receive-only capabilities may be integrated into the wireline telephony instrument by adding an integrated circuit, such as a CDMA chipset or a GSM chipset, to the wireline telephony instrument. Further, by integrating a display into the wireline telephony instrument, the wireline telephony instrument may display the data messages. Logic is also integrated into the wireline telephone for routing the data messages received by the wireline telephone to the display.