On Wednesday, Vodafone announced that they'd made the first ever satellite video call from a stock mobile phone in an area with no terrestrial signal. They used a mountain in Wales for their experiment.

It reminded me of an experiment of my own, way back in around 1999, which I probably should have made a bigger deal of. I believe that I was the first person to ever send an email from the top of Yr Wyddfa/Snowdon.

Nowadays, that's an easy thing to do. You pull your phone out and send it. But back then, I needed to use a Psion 5mx palmtop, communicating over an infared link using a custom driver (if you ever wondered why I know my AT-commands by heart... well, this isn't exactly why, but it's a better story than the truth) to a Nokia 7110 (fortunately it was cloudy enough to not interfere with the 9,600 baud IrDA connection while I positioned the devices atop the trig point), which engaged a GSM 2G connection, over which I was able to send an email to myself, cc:'d to a few friends.

It's not an exciting story. It's not even much of a claim to fame. But there you have it: I was (probably) the first person to send an email from the summit of Yr Wyddfa. (If you beat me to it, let me know!)

#note #technology #nostalgia #wales #climbing #walking #hiking #psion #nokia #mobiles #internet #email #history #telephone #telephones

Via: https://danq.me/2025/01/31/yr-wyddfas-first-email/

I’m old enough to remember ‘party lines’. My very first phone number as a kid (and now I’m really dating myself) was Kimberly 72297, shortened to KI-72297. #Telecommunications #telephones #ATandT #Landlines #Telecom #TelecomIndustry

From: @knittingknots2
https://mstdn.social/@knittingknots2/113772012964687691

The (extensive) phone system in my house is reachable from the outside world, but I don't like anyone phoning me overnight.

So I've made all the inbound routes time-of-day aware and they now play this message if you phone them overnight

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/I0gfkRpPchc

1961 General Telephone & Electronics ad
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#Telephones #Electronics #Advertisement #Retro #Vintage #RotaryPhones

A day of #telephones - reconfigured #FreePBX #trunks that link on-premises #PBX with #cloud PBX to use #PJSIP rather than chan_sip - hopefully they will stay registered more reliably, repaired handset of desktop #VOIP phone with broken RJ9 socket using another harvested from defective analogue set (not prettiest repair, and I had to check the wiring colours as they are *different* between original and new socket), but it works #Repair #Maintenance #Telecoms

Around the world, “Wind Phones” are offering space to process grief and connect with lost loved ones. Untethered to any service lines, whatever is spoken into the receivers will be carried only through the air.

https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2024/10/wind-phones/

As if getting a phone call wasn't terrifying enough!

"At the time, Edison envisioned the telephone as a business device only, with a permanently open line to parties at either end. [...] How would anyone know that the other party wanted to speak? Edison addressed the issue as follows: Friend David, I don't think we shall need a call bell as Hello! can be heard 10 to 20 feet away. What do you think?"

https://www.nytimes.com/1992/03/05/garden/great-hello-mystery-is-solved.html?unlocked_article_code=1.RU4.N1tw.L3EJLmqaaZMV&smid=url-share

via https://mastodon.social/@mogwai_poet/113287433761425182

When I was a kid, I would open old electronics to see how they worked.

This week my eldest kid took an old LAN powered desk telephone and rigged it so it works with our DECT based wireless phones, and has it sitting on their desk.

My kid takes old electronics and makes them work with modern systems.

#Parenting #Electronics #Telephones #Repurpose

cc: @rosenclosed

Do you want to know how to use a telephone? Fortunately here's a guide that tells you all about it:

https://fedi.video/w/w2yqfvZEXRVfu2GzGqC8bN

Dialing Tips (1950s)

https://fedi.video/videos/watch/f329e1c6-bf9e-408e-87b7-9b809b8c61ce

Bell Telephone Systems Reach out and touch someone (especially after 11pm when it's cheaper), 1980
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#BellTelephoneSystems #Telephones #Advertisement #Retro #blackmastodon #blackfedi #blackfriday #vintage #bestfriend

BLOG POST: Cheap international calls with mytello

I needed to call a UK phone number today from Ireland, and I didn't much fancy paying the high cost of an international call from my mobile phone.

My mobile network charges 23.4 cents per minute for international calls to the UK. That might not sound too bad, but I knew I would have to wait on hol

https://richardbloomfield.blog/2024/05/cheap-international-calls-with-mytello/
#Technology #InternationalCalls #MobilePhones #Telephones

Good morning, friends!

30 May 2024

We recently had our home phone shut off; I know ... we're late to the game. Our phone was ATT U-verse, which is essentially VOIP a phone system that communicates via the internet. But ATT announced that they were shutting down their DSL systems sometime in the near future and encouraged us to switch to ATT air with is a cellular system. They sent me a cellular modem free of charge. I've had a home phone in the house where I lived for nearly three quarters of a century. I can't say I'll miss it though, for the last year or so, it rang throughout the day with nothing but junk calls, telemarketers and what not - quite annoying.

"So I got home, and the phone was ringing. I picked it up, and said 'Who's speaking please?' And a voice said 'You are.'" - Tim Vine

1958 General Telephone & Electronics ad
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#Telephones #Advertisement #Retro #Vintage

1982 South Central Bell Commercial
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#Telephones #Phonecalls #MaBell #TvCommercial #BlackMastodon #BlackFedi #BlackFriday #retro #vintage

I was so focused on this 1966 telephone newspaper ad this weekend that I didn’t notice it was next to Walt Disney’s obituary until today.

time for some goofy forgotten telephony history

back in the late-80s, universities all over canada made a massive investment in converting their paper registration systems - which usually required the student to walk from faculty to faculty and have them hand-approved by the department - to touchtone telephone registration.

this was a massive bureaucratic improvement in many ways. a server with hundreds of phone lines handled the tens of thousands of students calling during registration week.

it also meant that adding and removing courses required a certain....... facility with what basically amounts to a verb-object scripting language.

both because of the dialtone scripting language, and server errors, most students, including myself, loathed calling in to register for courses.

i found this "sample worksheet" from 1996 buried in the waybackmachine. if you were a post-2000s student, it should give you a sense for the 90s.

circa 2003, the telephone registration system was replaced with an online registration system.

I have an odd wistful longing for the designs of late era land-line phones. As the need declines all that is left are those rectangular cordless things that slot in a base. Even bkeedin' Binatone was trying some good designs... #design #landlines #phones #telephones

Le Tholonet (Palette): Réunion mensuelle de l'Axul, Le vendredi 9 février 2024 de 20h00 à 23h55. https://www.agendadulibre.org/events/29349 #axul #reunionMensuelle #logicielsLibres #cultureLibre #téléphones