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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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