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The end of copper phone lines, and my old Stromberg Carlson phone

Radio World has a brief story about the copper to IP transition:

http://www.radioworld.com/article/fcc-reviews-copper-to-ip-transition/273645

In it there is a link to a more in-depth article from the CommLawBlog.

I stubbornly hold onto a mid 50s era Stromberg Carlson telephone with the genuine steel dial (not plastic) that my folks used in the house until they were replaced by updated 70s era rotary dial phones. When I needed a phone for my first apartment in 1982, it was the S-C that I pulled out of storage.

Regarding radio's "loudness wars": I regularly won the telephony "loudness wars" with the old S-C. Everyone commented on how loud I sounded when I'd call. I'm guessing the old phones were designed to have a stronger audio output to better deal with the old central offices and to better punch through on long distance circuits of the 50s.

And I could slam down the phone with the best of them. The S-C didn't have whatever hardware inside that suppressed spikes in the connection, such as when you hang up the phone. Modern phones just went click. The S-C: kerr-POPP! And don't forget pulse-dialing: "I keel you in the ear with my tommy gun! Dial Nine For Certain Death!"

I need to get my old Master Blaster Telephone With The Genuine Steel Dial fixed up and put on the copper network in the next few years, before it goes the way of the telegraph. If I do, I've got to get an honest to goodness land line. I don't think it would have the same effect getting filtered through something like Magic Jack or an equivalent analog-IP interface.
 
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I need to get my old Master Blaster Telephone With The Genuine Steel Dial fixed up and put on the copper network in the next few years, before it goes the way of the telegraph. If I do, I've got to get an honest to goodness land line.
When you order that landline, be sure and ask if it can handle a non-touch tone phone. There are areas where, as central office switches have been upgraded, pulse dialing no longer works.
 
Yikes! It's a total reversal from thirty years ago, when touch-tone service was extra. It really shouldn't be much of a surprise that pulse dial is starting to be pushed aside, I guess.
 
Many phone companies charge extra for rotary (pulse) dial service too.

This reminds me of something I did as a PD/OM in 1984 to cure a bad habit my afternoon drive talent had. He used to call home (which was a toll call) while he was on the air, and his shift suffered for it ... so I told him he wasn't allowed to do that unless it was an emergency and the call was under two minutes. So he started using the request line to make his calls so that it wouldn't light up on any other phones in the building. Of course, it was brought to my attention once the phone bill came, because there were all the toll calls being billed to the request line number.

I called GTE and had touch-tone service removed from the request line. Since all the phones in the building were touch-tone only, you can imagine the surprise that afternoon when Mr. Screw-Up came in. He turned up at my office door about 20 minutes in to tell me "something's wrong with the request line" and I got to tell him the request line was fine but that this was finally the end of his calling home on the air, and that the monthly phone bill was going to be scrutinized from now on and any calls made from the remaining lines to his house would be itemized and subtracted from his paycheck. (GM put that in writing for him the next day.)

What amazed me is that he thought he could get away with it.
 
Many phone companies charge extra for rotary (pulse) dial service too.

That is something I have not seen in my dealing with telcos for the last 40 yrs...TouchTone (trademarked AT&T/Bellcore) still costs $1/month extra in a lot of areas....in Texas, I believe Dial Pulse is required to be allowed by ANY Telco...

many years ago, I was having DID (direct inward dialing..or direct #s to an extension) trunks installed on the north side of Houston. ATT/SBC asked if I wanted DP or MF? (MF?? yes, Multi-Freq...the EVEN frequency tones used on toll trunks before T1s took over! They are not Touchtone or, DTMF as commonly called. MF was used only on lines that had voice AFTER the signaling was done and the far end decoders were switched to another trunk...DTMF was designed to be used on circuits that carried voice interspersed..if you see a keypad with buttons labelled ST and KP, that's a MF tone generator!) My ROLM CBX could not use MF so I went with DP..I asked the Telco WHY MF or DP and no DTMF?? seems at the time Houston still had a lot of ESS1/1A switches and they never bought the DTMF Sender cards (telco speak for tone generators)!!! About 2 years later, they upgraded to an ESS5...and we got DTMF on the lines (thank goodness)....the ROLMs did not like SOME DP off Nortel DMS switches....had fought that at another site....had to get that Telco to increase the interdigit delay to 500ms !! or else, a 0 and the next digit would get added together and the CBX showed a 13-16 being dialed!! The ROLM had been designed for use on the US Military Autovon system and could decode 16 digit pads (the ones with P, I, F and FO or ABCD buttons in the 4th column)...and evidently could also count that high in dial pulse!! Spent over a week battling that and the telco had brought out a DP reader they had not used in a while!! Nixie readout too!!

OHHH the good days!!
 
Yikes! It's a total reversal from thirty years ago, when touch-tone service was extra. It really shouldn't be much of a surprise that pulse dial is starting to be pushed aside, I guess.

With VoIP, you dont even need DTMF....ISDN did not require it either.
True DTMF is easier to decode (one chip does it all now)...but you can dial a single pair of wires by opening and closing the ckt...cant do that on a DTMF only line (PBXs have offered that for DECADES!! My ROLMs from the 1970s would allow you to permit DP, DTMF, combo or NO dialing from any extn.....until the digital ROLMPhones came out that is)
 
On December 21, 2009, AT&T asked the FCC for a sunset date on landlines, in about 15 years. At first, I thought that was what this thread was about. I have seen no response back but one article referred to letters from hundreds of people, complaining about the change. That's right, not millions or even thousands but "hundreds" of people!
 
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Quite some time ago, I heard that AT&T had asked the FCC for a sunset date for landlines, in about 15 years and that must be around ten years ago. At first, I thought that was what this thread was about.
One of my connections with AT&T says that when residential landlines get below a certain percentage of the number of homes their lines go past, they will ask the FCC to allow them to either force those customers to VoIP or sell off those accounts to one or more smaller companies. No plans on their part to drop business landline customers, though. That may or may not be related to what you had heard.
 
ATT has changed the sunset date a few times since their original request (Still saying their upkeep of the copper plant is costing them money they could be using for new technologies! HA!! A lot of Uverse installs locally are hybrid..the copper is still there for the last mile or less...unless the subdivision is new, ATT wont run fiber to the curb or house....yet) I see over a dozen trucks of ATT doing UVerse installs in my area every week; know the hotel they are staying at...asked one of the guys why they were from out of town (all of them coming from Houston about 90miles away)...cheaper for them on perdiem to come over instead of the company hiring local...and probably will not hire local anymore!.....

Verizon has quit offering NEW copper landline in several areas (Hurricane Sandy had a lot to do with that)...ISDN BRI is no longer available in a lot of areas..
 
On December 21, 2009, AT&T asked the FCC for a sunset date on landlines, in about 15 years. At first, I thought that was what this thread was about. I have seen no response back but one article referred to letters from hundreds of people, complaining about the change. That's right, not millions or even thousands but "hundreds" of people!

Considering that most folks probably never even heard of the request, a lack of response is not surprising.
 
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