Half the time when people say they're using telnet (including in this thread) they're really just using the client as a TCP client, not doing anything with the Telnet protocol.
No one is stopping you from using the telnet client. And really you should just use netcat
There's one thing I haven't figured out with netcat- how do you know it connected? (I just looked it up, after many years: the -v flag. Which makes sense because netcat is supposed to be "transparent").
No one is stopping you from using the telnet client. And really you should just use netcat