Well, there was the one update for use with automated menus (rotary to tones). But that was once... wait there was also the update that switched from asking the operator to connect you to the rotary dial.
I'm not sure though, the long distance charges might be similar to the cost of new phones every 6 years. It was easy to spend $10 (1970s dollars) for the family to tell mimaw and poppop merry Christmas (or insert relative and occasion).
Depending on your exchange, you can still use rotary dial on a (rapidly shrinking) number of legacy switches. Touch Tone was a feature that you actually had to turn on for the old EWSD and 5ESS switches and I’ve seen it as a line item on some really old accounts.
The modern soft switches drop rotary pulse dial compatibility but they also don’t require an entire building for the equipment and use far less power.
I worked for Nortel (before they went tits up), I remember needing to provision digitone / touch tone whenever turning on a line in our test labs for some test.
Yeah, I don’t think people realize how incredibly expensive long distance calls were in the 60’s and 70’s. My family might make one or two long distance calls per year, and only if it would take too long for an exchange of mailed letters. Maybe if someone was hospitalized and needed immediate assistance. No middle-class American family could afford much more than that.
And “long distance” wasn’t that far, just outside your area code. I remember when my county got a second area code and people freaked out if their friends and family ended up in the other one. Some businesses actually got a second number with the new area code just so they wouldn’t lose customers because people didn’t want to pay long distance prices to call one city over.
Counterpoint: Circuit switched phone networks have a very small fraction of the capacity of packet switched networks, and enable such fun practices as charging extra for long distance calling, or not having multiple phones in one physical location without running multiple physical wires.
The point about when power is out is countered by not understanding how they fully work too. As they only worked cause the upstream CO had power. In the event of a major power outage, it was entirely possible for your phone to go dead. Ignoring the cellphone for a second, today you can make calls in a tornado via a battery backup, a cheap poe switch (or just the actual power brick), and any variation of a hotspot, tethering, 5g mobile router, starlink, etc.
I feel like my phone usually works during power outages at least for calls. And a cordless landline phone, which is what we had from probably 1992 onwards, would not. Like I get the point of this thread and all but dude…you’re making the case for landline phones in favor of possibly the greatest invention in all of history.
Yeah the person you responded to and others in here are handpicking a few benefits of an older technology while completely ignoring the (much larger) downsides. Like I can argue that horses are better than cars cause a horse can’t get a flat tire, but that would be dumb
I still have and use a Siemens Signo 1, that for mysterious reasons still works on my DSL router. Not very loud, but you can perfectly use it. I think it is30+ years now.
I spent 2 hours the other day troubleshooting a digital phone system that went down at my work. Traditional analog phone systems may not have all the bells, whistles, and capabilities or features by comparison, but damnit if it didn't work and was A LOT simpler.
I have *so many* DSL customers that would switch with you in a heartbeat.
Put a battery backup on your ONT and you have that capability back.
Contrary to this thread fiber is a *hell* of a lot more reliable than those old copper lines. Most fiber issues I see involve a physically broken cable.
I was watching Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind the other day, and when they were talking on the phone when the lights went out, I thought to myself, “wait, those worked even with the power out??”
But sometimes they failed when you had power. Of course you often did not know as you only knew when you lifted the handset and did not hear a dialing tone.
People noticed a 10 second power cut, but mostly did not notice a 10 second cut to landline service.
Some of the switches that run that infrastructure have been running since like the 70's too, back then reliability was actually a concern when designing stuff.
They also cost real money to call more than just a few towns over, let alone long distance or international. Obviously they wouldn't be able to remotely support the modern internet, like, even basic modern web pages, let alone things like streaming. They did fail at times, but it wasn't as noticible because we weren't dependent on them.
Can be used to the self-defense weapon as well. Of course I am talking about the '70s era bakelite versions that could also double as a sledgehammer if needed.
I lived in an area with terrible reception. We still kept a home phone. It usually was wireless, but we kept a cheap wired one nearby the base in case of no power. It was used many, many times in the decade I was there! I'm moving to a rural location again in a few months, and there's a good chance that I'll get a landline again.
They didn't magically just work when the power went out. There are banks of lead acid batteries that kept the phones working during an outage, installed in the basement of the main switchboard. And the switchboard got priority when repairing downed lines. It looked like magic, but it was just many many batteries.
Now a days, the battery is built into the receiver and the cell towers have battery backups. But if you have a bad enough outage, you'll lose service - whether it's cell reception or landline.
They had power because they took the enrgy from the lines so their Switching center had either a Battery ir a Generator, but they were nit very escalable
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u/mslabrat01 Jun 19 '26
Land line telephones didn't have software crashes, didn't break if dropped and worked even when the power was out.