Our Daily Driver Home Phone

[rp2813]

NCS 1-15-79

Chuck, you have certainly seen it all -- go downhill -- over the course of 34 years, although the last five or ten have no doubt been by far the worst of them.  You don't have to hang in there much longer before retirement will be worthwhile, unless you intend to work until you're 65 or older.

 

I only put in half the time you have, as my management position was declared redundant after AT&T swallowed up the last "Baby Bell" anybody was interested in, Bell South.  All that's left of the Baby Bells now is Century Link, formerly Qwest, formerly U.S. West.  Neither AT&T nor Verizon is interested in that telco since its territory is so sparsely populated.

 

I'm really hoping the day doesn't come where a land line will once again be a luxury item that's only an option for those with discretionary income.  Residential service has never in the history of telecommunications paid for itself, and with so many people abandoning land lines in favor of cell phones, along with a generation that's being raised completely unaware of what a land line even is, the future for affordable residential service via nearly 100% reliable switched networks doesn't look good.

 

 

 

[jamiel]

AT&T has already proposed ending POTS in 2017...they'd like nothing more than to deploy U-verse where ever it's possible, then turning everyone else over to wireless. I can't say, though, that we've lost too much as far as the telecom network, though...is it better to have 100% coverage, 100% quality in say, 180 million dwelling units/business offices or 90% coverage, 90% quality on 240 million people's hips...it's arguable (says he who's made his career in the wireless business)

 

[jamiel]

Also, it's pretty cool to be able to have network diversity for $8 or so a month (I always recommend to people who are concerned about it to get a prepaid on another wireless carrier for some diversity)

 

[rinso]

I have to agree that the break up of the Bell System by the Department of Justice and Judge Greene was a "blunder." Not so much that some anti-trust action against Ma Bell wasn't due, it was a matter of how it was done. Also known as the MFJ, or Modified Final Judgement, it had to be modified because the original Final Judgement would have been technically impossible to implement. The beneficiary of any anti-trust action is suppossed to be the consumer, and that didn't happen.

A very similar anti-trust suit happened when the DOJ broke up the motion picture studio system. Box office prices doubled nearly overnight and many studios ended up in receivership or being sucked up by clueless corporate conglomerates.

 

[kb0nes]

Pulse to Tone converter

It hasn't yet been mentioned so I posted a link to a pulse to tone converter. Add one of these and your old rotary dials will work with non-comparable systems. I helped a buddy install one of these to get a Google Talk connection to recognize pulses, it worked just fine!

The old phone technology was amazing. It just HAD to work and it did. Not a lot of frills but it was indeed "the next best thing to being there".

The transition from analog to digital cellular was unfortunate from an intelligibility standpoint. The narrow bandwidth requires an aggressive audio compression algorithms and if signal levels result in any data loss at all, voice quality falls quickly. The compression is tailored to human speech, its really interesting to talk to someone who has a lot of background noise, especially music (at in at a bar etc.). The codec's just don't know how to behave and the voice performance goes to hell even with good signals. As a HAM and an analog enthusiast I would MUCH rather accept some fading and syllables dropping into the noise then have total word loss and nasty distortion due to the digital error correction!

Of course take away digital and along with it goes all the other neat functions the modern phones have. It would be nice if one day when the cellular data networks get robust enough that perhaps the voice calling bandwidth could be increased a bit to aid call quality.

Pulse to Tone Converters - Oldphoneworks

Pulse to Tone converters from Oldphoneworks convert Rotary pulse dial signals to modern DTMF tones.

www.oldphoneworks.com

 

[kb0nes]

Pulse to Tone converter

It hasn't yet been mentioned so I posted a link to a pulse to tone converter. Add one of these and your old rotary dials will work with non-comparable systems. I helped a buddy install one of these to get a Google Talk connection to recognize pulses, it worked just fine!

The old phone technology was amazing. It just HAD to work and it did. Not a lot of frills but it was indeed "the next best thing to being there".

The transition from analog to digital cellular was unfortunate from an intelligibility standpoint. The narrow bandwidth requires an aggressive audio compression algorithms and if signal levels result in any data loss at all, voice quality falls quickly. The compression is tailored to human speech, its really interesting to talk to someone who has a lot of background noise, especially music (at in at a bar etc.). The codec's just don't know how to behave and the voice performance goes to hell even with good signals. As a HAM and an analog enthusiast I would MUCH rather accept some fading and syllables dropping into the noise then have total word loss and nasty distortion due to the digital error correction!

Of course take away digital and along with it goes all the other neat functions the modern phones have. It would be nice if one day when the cellular data networks get robust enough that perhaps the voice calling bandwidth could be increased a bit to aid call quality.

Pulse to Tone Converters - Oldphoneworks

Pulse to Tone converters from Oldphoneworks convert Rotary pulse dial signals to modern DTMF tones.

www.oldphoneworks.com

 

[foxchapel]

what a beautiful phone ...

... I miss the old rotary dial phones and wish I had held on to some of ours. We still use an old trimline in the MBR, and have two of the old Caller I.D. boxes in use. These cordless home phones today are total junque. I hate ours.

Good old Ernestine the operator.(snort!snort!) one could easily hang the local cable TV/digital phone provider's sign over her station and her spiel would still apply. "We don't care, we don't have to care, we're the cable company."

 

[cehalstead]

old telephones

There is a company in NC that sells rebuilt Western Electric and other similar phones....www.chicagooldtelephone.com. I've bought several from them. A little pricey, but well worth it, considering the price of today's junk home phones.

 

[wayupnorth]

If anyone ever comes this way. There is a telephone museum with phones, swithboards and more put together from all the old switching stations in Ellsworth, ME. They have an awesome collection and have put it together the "old school" way. And they all work! Those people did a great job recreating and raising the funds to put this whole thing together.

 

[rp2813]

Here's a link to another source for beautifully refurbished rotary phones, primarily Western Electric and they are not exactly cheap.  Dennis does great work however, and you couldn't deal with a nicer guy. 

 

If you're on a budget, you can usually find WECo 500 models at swap meets.  Even rough looking ones will usually clean up to presentable condition.  I wouldn't worry too much about whether a swap meet phone will work.  As one post I read from a blogger told it, a swap meet dealer advised him that he didn't know if a 500 he had for sale worked, to which the blogger replied, "They always work."

 

I've considered buying one of the "Rot-a-tone" add-on pulse-to-tone converters.  At some point in the future it might be the only way a rotary dial phone can be used.  I've also thought about purchasing an "electret" transmitter element, which provides clearer transmission than the 100+ year-old carbon granule technology.  So far I haven't acted on either one, since I don't get any complaints from distant parties when I'm talking on any of my old phones, and I have our cordless handset from our answering system handy if I need to push any buttons.  More and more, call trees are providing the option to "press or say" so my rotaries get the job done without any intervention from a touchpad.

http://www.vintagerotaryphones.com/?page_id=35

 

[rinso]

100+ year-old carbon granule technology

You can also revive those old carbon granule transmitter cartridges by taking them out and rapping them a few times on a hard surface. It loosens the granules and makes them sound louder again.

 

[rp2813]

I've rapped transmitters periodically to keep them at optimum performance.  Still, the best carbon transmitter out there is going to sound fuzzy compared to most of today's electronic types.  It's the nature of the carbon technology.  I considered investing in an electret type transmitter when I was using my 1950 model 500 with 1953 transmitter for conference calls when I worked from home.  I was told by someone who didn't even know I was on an old phone that I sounded like I was dialing in from the 1950's because the transmission quality of the carbon capsule was so fuzzy compared to everyone else on the call using modern AT&T or Nortel business phones with electronic transmitters. 

 

IMO the F-1 capsules found on the 302 models, whose technology dates back to 1936 are more clear than the T-1 type that debuted on the 500 in 1949 and were used in Western Electric handsets all the way through the run of the 2500 touchtone models.

 

[e2l-arry]

One ringy dingy,

A gracious Good Afternoon. Have I reached the party to whom I am speaking?