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The Telecom Digest for May 3, 2013
Volume 32 : Issue 94 : "text" Format
Messages in this Issue:
Re: Why Don't Cell Phones have Dial Tones? (bernieS)

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Date: Wed, 01 May 2013 00:14:06 -0400
From: bernieS <bernies@netaxs.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Why Don't Cell Phones have Dial Tones? 
Message-ID: <20130501042057.59134.qmail@leila.iecc.com>

In 1986 Western Union introduced a cellular car phone designed for
executives, to emulate a familiar office phone (cellular car phones
were a new concept then.)  It had a landline-style handset and a
traditional-looking DTMF pad in the center console.  When you took the
phone off-hook, and it detected network availability, it played a
realistic-sounding dial tone!

That phone was manufactured by E.F. Johnson, which at the time was
partly owned by Western Union.  It's trunk-mounted transceiver had two
TNC antenna connections for the Diversity Receiver inside.  I never
saw another cellphone with that feature, which greatly reduced signal
drop-outs by constantly 'voting' on which antenna/receiver had the
best signal.  Fading at 800 MHz was a common problem.  Audio quality
was superb full-duplex FM with negligible latency--much better and
natural-sounding than today's mobile phones.






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