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Telephones

My understanding is that PSTN and ISDN devices will still work using an adapter that the telco will provide.

Cheers,

DV
 
ISDN I doubt. The network termination boxes don't understand pulse dialing either. I did use to have a DTMF keypad widget for use with pulse dial phones
I just checked mine and it does give a full 48 V line voltage. I know that some of the older NTEs in the ADSL days only gave 24 V like a PABX and presumably a weak ring voltage.
 
Several people I know don't carry their mobiles around or live in Not Spots, so ringing them on their mobile number is a lottery.
 
Your first cellphone was a Nokia or Ericsson? Fun times. Cheers.

Actually a Motorola on the old analogue NMT network. Worked flawlessly, booth phone and network. Ok, the phone was big and needed charging every day. Thankfully that's not happening today *




* Irony, if someone missed it.
 
My last landline phone was 1999!

My point, I think, is the no one in my family will have something that used to be so exciting and modern. Older people are dead and the rest of of have moved on from something that was ubiquitous.

I’m guessing that Broadcasting over the air won’t be far behind.

Things that were such a big part of our lives. I remember that people used to keep the phone in the hall, and that you could buy telephone furniture to sit in whilst you talked and shivered in the draughts.
 
Your first cellphone was a Nokia or Ericsson? Fun times. Cheers.

Just came to think of it. When the NMT network was introduced in Sweden around 1981, both Ericsson and Nokia made phones. But they didn't want to tarnish their brands with such technomaniac thing, so they where respectively called 'SRA' and 'Mobira'!!!
 
I was a late adopter with both landlines and mobiles. I lived in a flat in Liverpool for many years during the 80s before getting a BT landline put in. There was a payphone nearby so I’d previously just used that. Home phones were really expensive back then and not worth putting into a rented flat unless you were sure you were staying there for years, and I never really knew. Had to wait months for it to be installed too IIRC. I remember getting a dodgy second hand phone off the BT fitter for a fiver as I’d been tipped off that was ‘a thing’ and a lot cheaper than a new one. They used to carry a few in the back of the van to sell on the black market. I didn’t get a mobile until I was given/forced to have one as an IT guy in the ‘90s. First one was one of the classic 3 series Nokkias. An iPhone 4S was my first smartphone, and I’m now on my second (a 6S).

My parents were late adopters too, again pressure from my father’s work being the key factor. As I recall there was nothing until a Trimphone appeared in about 1972.
 
My parents got their first phone around 1964. Black Bakelite job. You had to wait years to get the line, and calls outside the local area were rare and precious. International calls were carefully planned and kept to a few minutes. Calls to the America, Asia or Africa just didn’t happen. My mother just wrote to her friends there.

We lost our last real landline when we went to fibre 2 years ago: there was no option to keep the old copper wire.

First mobile was a large clunky Mobira Cityman 1320, used for business in the car, ca 1987. That phone was huge, but I drove all over the UK with it. The charging base was designed for a desktop, so the handset had to be tied to the base with elastics. The whole thing was connected to the cigarette lighter and balanced between the front seats. To take a call we would just lift the whole thing to the ear, charger base and all. My first proper pocket phone was a Motorola 8200, 1995 followed by a StarTAC. Excellent phones, except you had to pull the little aerial out.
 
In 1980 my best pal got a work at Ericsson, designing telephones. It was a good job, but what, telephones? What could be more uncool and boring for a young generation o_O
 
I can not remember a time when there was not a phone or two in the house - one for business linked in to the office about a mile away and one the home number. This is remembering back to the 40s.
I also remember the building of the new automatic telephone exchange in town, it was a big 3 or 4 storey brick building. When it first opened for use we could take a look around and see the Strowger equipment clattering away.
I worked at a telephone exchange manufacturing company making the Strowger exchanges (as well the next two generations of exchanges). The very new kit was being installed in the small exchanges away from the big towns and cities (which being the first in the automatic telephone exchange queue were installed with the Strowger kit).
IBM built a telephone exchange system out of the architecture of the System 360 computer. It connected calls very quickly.
 
ISDN I doubt. The network termination boxes don't understand pulse dialing either. I did use to have a DTMF keypad widget for use with pulse dial phones
I just checked mine and it does give a full 48 V line voltage. I know that some of the older NTEs in the ADSL days only gave 24 V like a PABX and presumably a weak ring voltage.

If I can find /buy a DTMF keypad widget will this work/bring any advantage in addition to/instead of a Termination Box in (2025)?

I use two 1954 GPO telephones (restored and converted myself) + 1 2019 keypad phone- all on landline only. No internet except that my Tablet is connected via a SIM card subscription.

Thanks in advance for your advice.
P.S. I particularly value the ring tone of the GPO phones, and their fidelity on voice compared to the keypad phone.
 
I can not remember a time when there was not a phone or two in the house
The railway project that I work on still specify phones everywhere. This gets expensive as they want desktop VOIP units.
You know privately that they will actually run on WhatApp
 
Didn't they know how to tap the number?
My parents never had a phone up until I left in 1966, but I knew how to do it in the old press button A/B phone boxes. IIRC it stopped working when STD* was introduced.
*No, not sexually transmitted disease. :rolleyes:
 


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