Number PULEAZE! Part Three:

[iej]

Seems they're in the terminal stage of decline here too.

It hit me this year with Christmas cards.

My mom passed away last year (relatively young) and so did several elderly aunts in their 80s and 90s. They were all the type of people who'd have spent hours on the phone chatting away about just life in general and would make a point of calling each other. They were very much the nexuses of communication in my extended family and now they've all passed away and in relatively quick succession.

I decided I would make an effort to try and keep the connections alive, and I've been doing some of it through social media, but I thought I would write some Christmas cards. Every year, when I go home there's always a huge display of cards on the mantle piece on little fake washing lines. So, I decided to dig out the old cards and get the reply addresses. Seems most of them are just "Merry Xmas from Ann and Patrick" "Happy New Year, Love Mary." I have no idea who 80% of them are from and none of them have reply addresses.

I ran though some of the cards with my dad and brother and they recognised some of them but only had vague notions of where some of these people might live. Then I thought, hey I'll look them up in the phone book (online) and it seems that going ex-directory (unlisted) is the new fashion due to the death of landlines, the advent of a plague of telemarketers and general modern paranoia, so it's now impossible to find anyone either to call them or write to them. Whereas if you went back 25+ (maybe a little further) years ago most households had a landline and it was relatively unusual to be ex-directory (unlisted.)

I didn't grow up in the age of "Number Please!?" or even the days of electromechanical switching. I was born in the 80s and the digital age was well established, but I do have fond memories of a phone in the hall, even if they were modern and cordless they were physically there and you could reach a household, not just an individual.

I even remember having a proper tape-based answering machine and then some crazy network-based "Family Mailbox" on the phone where when you'd call our house you'd get "You've reached the Simpsons household -- if you want to leave a message for Marge press 1, for Homer press 2, for Bart press 3 or for Lisa press 4 and each of us had our own private mail box. You picked up the phone and got the worbelling dial tone and you could check a message in you.

I think though it's an era that we're never going to see again. The technology's moved on so rapidly in the past couple of decades and really landline services are probably going to end up as something that will really only be used in offices or similar environments or for niche uses where someone particularly wants one (and obviously all VoIP based). The rest of us are just using mobiles.

Coincidentally, I was reading an article about the decline of landline usage here in Ireland and while it has been happening it seems to be increasing exponentially in the last few years. A lot of broadband services here tended to come with a VoIP landline (the router will almost always have an analogue RJ11 port for phone jacks and sometimes even can host DECT cordless phones like a little mini PBX) but I know in my case I probably could count on my hand the number of times a year I have used that service. I'm not even sure I could recall the number without looking it up in my iPhone.

My landline provider / ISP also offers an iPhone / Android app to use your landline, but I mean why would you bother? I installed it and it was a gimmick fo ra few days and then I forgot I even had it.

They all initially had some notion that consumers would still want landline services and that they'd all just hop over to VoIP when older digital circuit switched (TDM) services shut down, but in reality many of those companies have scaled back their investments in fixed voice services as there's very little demand.

it's also increasingly difficult to even find mobile plans that don't have unlimited voice minutes, even on really cheap 9.99/month plans they're usually throwing in voice as almost an afterthought freebie and then you've free pan-EU roaming and all of that stuff to, so it's really pointless having a landline.

They seem to be going the same way as payphones, hotel phones, fax machines and teletype. An era has very much ended.

It looks like we'll have a world where offices will be connected with SIP trunks and the majority of the rest of us aren't going to use anything other than our smartphones.. sigh.

 

[iej]

Store the devices!

I'd just add if you do still have landline equipment - wireline phones, cordless phones, answering machines, faxes, etc keep them. I've a feeling in a few decades time we'll be looking at those devices with huge nostalgia, even more so than looking back at the 50s and 60s from today as the technology will have changed so much that even the concept of having a device that was tied to a physical location will seem utterly alien. It already is!

I've put a few old 1970s/80s/90s phone related stuff into a box and sealed it in the attic. It's just a few typical phone company phones. One in the shape of an Irish map. A Sony integrated answering machine from the late 80s that took micro cassettes. A fax machine and a bunch of old modems and DSL modems and so on that were all around.

I also threw in the original Apple iBook and an old iMac from 1999!

I just thought it would be a rather cool time capsule when I (or someone else) opens it up in a few decades' time.

 

[Ultramatic]

 

 

Landlines are vanishing. I thought it was really humorous that Peter Eavis thinks he won't be losing copper based phone service. He's utterly delusional or a made-up character for the story. Fiber optics are being forced of landline subscribers. Whether you like it or not. And fiber optic lines do not work in a power outage. Next month, I am being forced to switch to fiber optics. Verizon sent me a "stand by" power source that runs on 8 D size batteries. In a blackout, this only powers your phone line for a few hours. And that's it, unless you buy case loads of D batteries.  Last time we had a power failure it lasted 23 hours. There will always be a few holdouts for "landline" service. But we are a dying breed. I highly doubt anyone born in the last few years will ever have a landline in their home.

 

[wayupnorth]

I'll keep my landline and rotary dial phone if power is out. Spotty if best for cell service for big bucks here. Not worth it.

 

[iej]

I heard some recordings of the old operators here in the 1970s or 80s and it was just quite amusing to hear the language used.

Message in quite posh accent : “Operator services. Your call has been placed in a queue and will be answered in STRICT rotation, please hold the line!” “Your call is still in a queue. Please continue to hold and your call will be answered by the next available operator, in STRICT rotation!”

“National Operator! Hello caller? Can I help you?.” “Could you reverse charges to 091 234 xxx please?” “Just a moment caller! What’s your name please for the call? Trying that number now! Ring ring .... ring ring ... “hello! This is the national operator, I have John on the line (hello Mammy!!) - will you accept charges from John ? ... “yes! ... “ “thank you caller - you can go ahead now - goodbye!”

It was all rather prim and starchy sounding, constantly addressing the person as “caller”.

 

[retro-man]

What I don't do is keep my cell phone on me at all times in the house. When it rings I am not usually near it and have to go searching for the phone. With the land lines we used to have phones all over the house and would just pick up the closest one. I feel I have gone backwards in time to when I was a child and we had 1 phone in the house for all to use. I know 2 steps forward 1 backward.

Jon

 

[iej]

I think though the general focus on voice services is fading. People are increasingly less likely to want to take calls and that’s being made worse by the plague or scam calls that some people seem to be getting hit with.

What I’ve noticed in Ireland, and I can’t say that this applies elsewhere, is that ever since caller ID became ubiquitous (late 80s or early 90s?) people started to become a lot more circumspect about picking up the phone to numbers they didn’t recognize. Then people started not listing in the directories at all. That was followed by an increasingly expectation that people to contact by text as a first point of contact be it SMs, iMessage, WhatsApp or whatever else, people don’t seem to want to pick up their phone as much as they used to.

Even in a business environment, I would say 60% or more of my communication is now by instant message of some sort and not voice.

I also notice a lot of people hide behind voicemail, and I am guilty of this myself. I gave a visual voicemail service called HulloMail that transcribes the messages to text and displays them so, if I get a call from someone I don’t recognise, I will tend to let it go to voicemail and get back to them if they’re not trying to sell me something. Even my outgoing message is “hi, you’ve reached .... I can’t take your call right now, please send a text or leave a message when you hear the beep” to discourage people from leaving endless voicemails.

Even in my office I don’t think any of us use our desk phones. I’m not even sure what my number is. I’ve some big fancy Alcatel VoIP phone from a few years ago sitting on my desk. It has more functions than your average 1990s PC had but I’d say 3% or the company knows how any of them work and I don’t think anyone has ever used them. I mean have you ever forwarded a voicemail message to another user or setup a distribution list!? They always seem to have been solutions in search of a problems and tech that came to market just as the world was moving on to smartphones.

I’m in two minds about all of this. In some ways we’re far more in touch than ever before. I can keep in contact with people all over the planet , with voice, text, video, send photos etc etc we basically no charge and I do it all the time. The costs are tiny compared to what they used to be. I mean if you go back to even the 1990s the cost of long distance calls was steep, mobile calls were very expensive and international calls were usually so expensive that you’d think twice before even contemplating a fall abroad. Nowadays I can FaceTime from Ireland to NZ for 4 hours and it doesn’t cost me anything extra. That’s a completely different world of telecommunications.

So yeah, I’m nostalgic but at the same time what we have today is absolutely incredible. Even this forum - I’m posting this message on my phone, sitting in a cafe in a remote part of Ireland looking out over the mountains and admiring the light sprinkling of snow, on blazingly fast 4G that has more bandwidth to my phone than an entire mid sized town had 20 years ago. You’re potentially reading this on similar tech in remote parts of the US, Canada, Australia, Latin America etc.
The tech is absolutely amazing but we take it for granted, even though it’s all happened so quickly.

 

[Ultramatic]

Bell System 1940

 

 

<script async src="//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

 

[Ultramatic]

[No message]

 

[imperial70]

Telephone Museum

Is in Waltham. Thank you for posting "this day in history..." I would never have known there is a telephone museum not to far from where I live.

 

[Ultramatic]

 

 

You're welcome Paul.

 

[Ultramatic]

The Bell Telephone Company 1949

 

 

<script async src="//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

 

[Ultramatic]

[No message]

 

[Ultramatic]

[No message]

 

[Ultramatic]

[No message]

 

[Ultramatic]

[No message]

 

[tolivac]

This was the STUPIDEST move in TELCO history-the ONLY "monopoly" that functioned well and folks the were NOT qualified made the decision!The Judges should have been strung up by their thumbs!

 

[Ultramatic]

[No message]

 

[imperial70]

Dec 31 1983

There is another spin to this that isn't so sad.
- Helped revitalize the computer industry as the Unix operating system was ready to emerge and allow for a true open operating environment that made it easier to share information between different platforms.
- AT&T was able to spread their wings into other areas and help spark start up companies.
- The "internet boom" may have been delayed for quite a while without the break-up.

 

[iej]

I'd suspect without the breakup of AT&T and also the opening of competition in Europe (which was what drove the development of GSM and subsequently the real cellphone revolution) you'd have had stale old monopolies driving both of those sectors without much innovation.

In a way AT&T / Bell was a great organisation (as were some of its counterparts elsewhere) but I think we tend to look back on those days through heavily nostalgia tinted glasses too. The services may have been high quality (at least in the denser populated areas) but they were extremely expensive. I mean, if you look back to the 1970s and 80s things like international calling and even long-distance calling were ludicrously expensive.

I would strongly suspect what would have happened without those breakups would have been the delay or failure to thrive of the internet. You'd have had some Bell System Networks counterpart that would have been managed by AT&T in the US and you'd have had similar in Europe. I mean, look at how PTT/France Telecom developed a privately managed network system called Minitel back in the late 70s and into the 1980s. It was innovative, but only within its own walled garden.

I would argue that the biggest downsides in the US system at the moment isn't the advent of competition, but rather the failure of regulators in recent years. The FCC needs a lot more teeth to prevent the growth of monopolies, particularly in areas like internet access, and that has not been done. If anything it's been a lot more aggressively pursued in the EU over the last decade or so, with the US starting to really allow regulatory systems to be swamped by powerful business lobbies.

Without effective regulation, in an imperfect market, you will always have huge distortions and risks of monopoly and oligopoly and that makes for bad capitalism and unfortunately, that's what I'm seeing in the US with the lack of choice in a lot of markets when it comes to things like high speed ISPs.

Monopolists aren't benevolent or operating in your interests. They're not public bodies. They just have you over a barrel and need to be regulated and competition needs to be kept strong.