Thanks for all the help people gave while I was setting up Asterisk.
I have made something amusing you all might enjoy –
For those with antique phones, mostly------any SIP/ATA phone will work including software ones.
The idea is simply for fun, you can securely connect to other “exchanges” and place lines wherever you like, phones right, an Operator will transfer your calls and you can get the weather or dial the time just like ATT in the days of plain older telephone service.
it’s free to use, coins can pay for AI time like a payphone. It’s quite fun and I invite you all to join!
I was there about 3 months ago donating a 535C PBX to them. When I asked them about when are you going to do a VoIP exhibit or anything from the hybrid key era they said there has been a lot of hemming and hawing internally because the trustees don’t actually know how to go about putting something like that together. right now when they have visitors call each other on their private PBX people just say hi and hang up. But I think they might love the idea of tying into potsbox so visitors can make a call on one of their phones into a weather report or something like that.
You have highlighted an important bit of the PSTN that was that I think young people today do not understand, is that there was more than just people with telephones on it.
Yes but I’m not talking about FAX machines and stuff like that, I’m talking about services that people would access being provided by machines/computer systems. Today, everything from getting the weather to getting phone sex is all done on the Internet over the data network. Machines are still providing all of it (guess who the biggest consumers of audio/deepfake voice is and what they are selling with it) but it’s now all done over data on the Internet and people are accessing it using smartphones.
It’s a mind blower to the gen Zers that 50 years ago people were getting their minds “blown” by picking up grandmas rotary phone… for $2.99 a minute..lol (granted they also got time, weather, playlists, etc.)
Just like the old MTV song “video killed the radio star” today “Internet killed the telephone star”
I will bow out now that I’ve given you your earworm for the day…
I’m 52, rotary phones were still pretty common place well into the late 80’s. 50 years ago, even more common place Here’s a mind blower for you, until the Bell Breakup in 1984 you would rent the phone from your phone company. Another mind blower, touch tone service was a “premium service” from inception to about the mid-80’s. So having a touch tone phone would cost you more money.
On Thursday 21 May 2026 at 16:45:35, BlazeStudios wrote:
until the Bell Breakup in 1984 you would rent the phone from your
phone company. Another mind blower, touch tone service was a “premium
service” from inception to about the mid-80’s. So having a touch tone
phone would cost you more money.
It was pretty much the same in the UK from the GPO, and then British Telecom.
Antony.
–
It may not seem obvious, but (6 x 5 + 5) x 5 - 55 equals 5!
On Thursday 21 May 2026 at 16:45:35, BlazeStudios wrote:
until the Bell Breakup in 1984 you would rent the phone from your
phone company. Another mind blower, touch tone service was a “premium
service” from inception to about the mid-80’s. So having a touch tone
phone would cost you more money.
It was pretty much the same in the UK from the GPO, and then British Telecom.
Antony.
–
It may not seem obvious, but (6 x 5 + 5) x 5 - 55 equals 5!
I’m 60 and this was common with most phone companies. Supposedly Bell employed “Ring Equivalence Detection” to allow them to tell if you had more telephone sets connected to your phone line than you were renting. The Carterphone decision in 1968 ended the rental requirement but plenty of people still rented. I was very proud of myself at age 11 when I convinced by parents to buy their first telephone set at the store, and send the rented phone back. That was in 1978 as I recall. I also remember the touch tone premium.
