In uk.railway Frank Erskine twisted the electrons to say:
My current "favourite" Americanism is the announcement on a delayed
aeroplane that "the airplane will be taking off momentarily".

Well the Yanks seem to care a lot about that sort of thing? Leastways,
they keep telling us they could care less ... :-)
--
These opinions might not even be mine ...
Let alone connected with my employer ...

In uk.railway Charles Ellson twisted the electrons to say:
On Fri, 30 Mar 2012 18:58:03 -0700 (PDT), wrote:
Curiously, some landline phones in the building were rotary--are
rotary sets still used in Britain?
They should still work on most if not all public exchanges but the
telephones (apart from various decorative/"special range" ones) will
be more than 25-30 years old by now. There are also some modern "old
style" telephones whose keypads are made to look like dials.

A quick Google suggests that one can, if desired, get a rotary dial phone
where the underlying phone is digital? (i.e. not a digital push button
phone with the buttons arranged in a circle, but an actual rotary dial.)
--
These opinions might not even be mine ...
Let alone connected with my employer ...

On Apr 2, 7:13*pm, "
wrote:
On 31/03/2012 02:51, wrote:

On Mar 30, 4:08 pm, "Adam H. *wrote:
were built into automobiles and communicated with base stations with
much longer ranges than transponders on cell towers.

P.S. *In the US in the late 1940s, radio phones became available for
automobiles. *They were also available on major trains.

Couldn't of been cheap at that time.

They weren't cheap. But despite the premium pricing, demand far out
stretched supply and there was a long waiting list for service.

When the Metroliner entered service, the pay phone aboard that was a
bit pricey. It cost more than a regular landline long distance call,
but not a great deal more; certainly reasonable for a businessman on
the go. I wonder how much usage they got.

In uk.railway Stephen Sprunk twisted the electrons to say:
Even between two carriers using the
same protocol, carriers generally "lock" the phones they sell so they
can't be used on another's network; this is the price of getting "free"
or heavily-discounted phones when signing a service contract--but it
also means millions of phones (and their toxic batteries) go into
landfills every year.

Depends on the operator. Vodafone & O2 will, I'm told, unlock brand new
contract phones if requested. They take the view that you're still going
to be paying the monthly contract amount for the duration of the contract
but if you want to pay another network's contract as well then that's up
to you! (One could argue they benefit in that they get the contract
money but don't have the costs of providing the service!)

Alternatively there any number of companies (see http://mobilevaluer.com/)
which will buy old phones and recycle them ...
--
These opinions might not even be mine ...
Let alone connected with my employer ...

On Apr 2, 6:11*pm, "Adam H. Kerman" wrote:

The analog cell phones of that era supposedly could be switched beteween
the A and B carrier, though I think in practice very people did so.

Hm? Even though the prefix was used to route the inbound call to the
correct cellular network?


I'm not sure how the A/B switched worked. On my Motorola "flip
phone" (model 550), one had to go into the options mode and select it
out of a menu. I had Bell Atlantic, and I believe the baby Bell was
typically assigned the "B" setting, while the other company got the
"A" setting. I don't know what would've happened if I tried to use
the "A" setting.

When I upgraded phones, my old phone still 'sort of'' worked. If I
tried to make a call on it, I would get a recording asking for a
credit card number to place the call on an a la carte basis. (911
calls were mandated to be free).

As mentioned, I think very few people bothered to switch between A and
B.

Nobody wrote:

It intrigues me as to why North America cannot go to area code +
eight-digit addressing. Theoretically, you're increasing the number
availability by ten but don't have to create a new area code.

Aussie's done it, so have Brazil, Japan, France...

If planned for early enough, it could have been done if use of 0 or 1 as
the second digit was for longer line numbers. But you're misunderstanding
the situation that leads to the opening of new area codes, which is not
now, and never has been, about rapid exhaustion of line numbers.

Area codes have ranges reserved for expansion, but quite frankly, it
should never come to that.

On Apr 2, 7:25*pm, Stephen Sprunk wrote:
On 02-Apr-12 17:11, Adam H. Kerman wrote:

wrote:
The analog cell phones of that era supposedly could be switched beteween
the A and B carrier, though I think in practice very people did so.

Hm? Even though the prefix was used to route the inbound call to the
correct cellular network?

My AMPS phones all had menu options controlling whether to prefer A or B
towers, allow roaming to the other one, etc. *You couldn't port your
number from one carrier to another at the time, but at least you could
keep your (expensive) phone when switching.

When I had an analog phone my 'local area' was relatively small,
beyond that I was roaming and the cost per call went up dramatically.
The flip side was my monthly fee was only $20. If I paid more per
month my roaming area would've been bigger. I had to be careful in
border areas since if a distant tower handled the call I'd be charged
the steep roaming fees.

One good thing about that old phone was that there was a separate LED
that lit on roaming. It was bright yellow and readilly seen--not some
obscure logo buried in a tiny screen.

I liked my old phone. For my usage the $20/month worked out fine.
The phone came free with a year's subscription. The few times I had
to pay for peak minutes or roaming was worth the convenience and
didn't offset the savings. The phone was bigger than today's digital
units, but it came with a nice case that securely clipped on my belt.
(My current belt case can easily be knocked off).

One time I was riding a train and talking on my phone. We went
through what apparently was a dead spot since the other passengers
with newer digital phones all lost service. I didn't and kept on
talking.

I had to give the phone up when they dumped analog. But also at that
time the batteries wouldn't hold a charge and there weren't
replacements available. One bad thing--I think the recharger didn't
shut off automatically when the phone was charged, so if left in too
long the battery would overcharge and be damaged.

On Apr 2, 7:39*pm, Charles Ellson wrote:

They should still work on most if not all public exchanges but the
telephones (apart from various decorative/"special range" ones) will
be more than 25-30 years old by now. There are also some modern "old
style" telephones whose keypads are made to look like dials.-

In the US, telephone sets used to be rented, so they were built to
last a long time, withstand rough use, and be maintainable. The old
Western Electric telephone sets still have plenty of service left in
them, and are easily repaired.

Rotary dial sets are a bit of a nuisance to use today since so many
businesses require Touch Tone signals to get through a front-end
menu. Also, many US places now have 10 digit diailing. But there are
plenty of Western Electric Touch Tone units out there.

There are also some General Telephone (Automatic Electric) units out
there and usually they're ok, too.

There are a number of modern 'decorator' sets sold today that look old
but use Touch Tone keys and have modern innards.

On Tue, 3 Apr 2012 07:31:51 -0700 (PDT)
wrote:
Rotary dial sets are a bit of a nuisance to use today since so many
businesses require Touch Tone signals to get through a front-end
menu. Also, many US places now have 10 digit diailing. But there are
plenty of Western Electric Touch Tone units out there.

You used to be able to get a tone dialer that you put over the mouthpiece
of an old phone that would do the job. I got one from Tandy (Radioshack
in the US) and used back in the late 80s.

B2003

On 03/04/2012 15:37, d wrote:
On Tue, 3 Apr 2012 07:31:51 -0700 (PDT)
wrote:
Rotary dial sets are a bit of a nuisance to use today since so many
businesses require Touch Tone signals to get through a front-end
menu. Also, many US places now have 10 digit diailing. But there are
plenty of Western Electric Touch Tone units out there.

You used to be able to get a tone dialer that you put over the mouthpiece
of an old phone that would do the job. I got one from Tandy (Radioshack
in the US) and used back in the late 80s.


They also used to be provided free with answer machines to allow remote
login and control (or at least 2 of mine had them included)