Would you know if the British railway system ever had radio phones for
use by passengers as premier American trains did?

They were introduced at about the same time that the original analogue
cellular 'phones were starting to become generally available, but not
many people had them. *The ones I saw, on the 125 mph Diesel High
Speed Trains, probably around the early to mid '80s took only BT
Phonecards, not cash.

Not sure but I think Bomo line 4Reps had them for a while in the RB.

--
Nick

wrote:

Originally Mexico was to have an area code, but that was changed to a
separate country code. Not sure why, it would seem to make sense to
make it part of NANP.

Northwest Mexico and Mexico City were dialable without country code
with two special three digit area code-like trunk codes within the NANP.
That ended when those three-digit numbers were assigned as area codes in
the early 1990's. The telephone system of northwest Mexico had US investors,
which explains that. I assume Mexico City was for convenience, probably
the vast majority of the calls anyway.

I don't know if AT&T ever reserved area codes to any other countries for
future expansion of NANP.

wrote:
On Mar 30, 12:25 pm, "Adam H. Kerman" wrote:

Because the original mobile carriers were all subsidiaries of the incumbent
land line telephone companies, they thought in land-line terms.

As I recall it, when cell phone service was finally authorized, there
was to be _two_ competing carriers in a region--one the traditional
wireline carrier, the other a newcomer.

John Levine came up with the example of McGaw Cellular, which did deploy
its own networks in some places. In other places, it bought existing networks.
But often, the second carrier in town was merely owned by a Baby Bell from
another region, or a non-Bell telephone company.

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?

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.

On 01/04/2012 18:15, wrote:
On Apr 1, 6:20 am, wrote:

*Letters on dials were originally to aid in dialing exchange names, eg
PEnnsylvania 6-5000 instead of 736-5000. The US gradually
transitioned to "All Number Calling" by 1980.

I wrote a reply to this, but for some reason Google Groups won't allow
me to send it. I'll try to send it as a reply just to you, which may
be better since it's quite long, and off-topic for this group.-

The above came through fine. Not sure why google rejected your other
reply.

An email won't work. This thread has already gone way off topic, so
it probably won't hurt to post it publicly. Others may find it of
interest. Maybe break it up into parts. Thanks.

(Trains and telecommunications have many 'connections' in that they're
both common carriers, some of telephone technology is used for
signalling, and trains always have been heavy users of
telecommunications, including development of their own networks.)


Trains and Undergrounds also provide good conduits for regular phone
cables, I might add.

writes:

On Mar 30, 8:02Â*pm, Graham Nye wrote:


IIRC they were also called cell phones in the UK back when analogue
cellular systems were new, complete with diagrams of hexagonal cells
covering the countryside. Mention of cell or cellular has fallen out
of use in the UK to be replaced by "mobile". But language keeps
moving on and for younger people (say, teens and twenties) mobiles
may just be referred to as "phones" now, as landline phones are
something only their parents will have.

In a Britsh TV show aired in the US, a teen referred to her cellular
phone as her "mobile", pronounced with three distinct syllables (mo bi
al). In the US, the word often comes out as two syllables, as "mo
bowl".

Curiously, some landline phones in the building were rotary--are
rotary sets still used in Britain?

In theory they can be, exchanges still support pulse dialing, but I
haven't seen one for years.

Do you remember what the TV programme was?

Phil

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.

Such settings are generally absent from phones today--and wouldn't do
much good in many cases due to the use of mutually incompatible
protocols (CDMA, GSM, iDEN, etc.). 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.

S

--
Stephen Sprunk "God does not play dice." --Albert Einstein
CCIE #3723 "God is an inveterate gambler, and He throws the
K5SSS dice at every possible opportunity." --Stephen Hawking

On Sun, 1 Apr 2012 14:06:14 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

On Apr 1, 2:41*pm, "Adam H. Kerman" wrote:

AT&T created the numbering plan in 1947, and it took effect in 1951. It's
said that they intended to number all the world's countries within it, but
I don't see how there could have possibly been sufficient numbering space.

Given the many challenges in converting the US system to universal 10
digit addressing and converting the remaining manual exchanges to
dial, I don't think they were too concerned with direct dial
international calling at that time. They still had to lay cables to
many places to replace radio for overseas calls.

Some countries couldn't be reached, by any method, until the 1970s.

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...

On Fri, 30 Mar 2012 18:58:03 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

On Mar 30, 8:02*pm, Graham Nye wrote:


IIRC they were also called cell phones in the UK back when analogue
cellular systems were new, complete with diagrams of hexagonal cells
covering the countryside. Mention of cell or cellular has fallen out
of use in the UK to be replaced by "mobile". But language keeps
moving on and for younger people (say, teens and twenties) mobiles
may just be referred to as "phones" now, as landline phones are
something only their parents will have.

In a Britsh TV show aired in the US, a teen referred to her cellular
phone as her "mobile", pronounced with three distinct syllables (mo bi
al). In the US, the word often comes out as two syllables, as "mo
bowl".

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.

Stephen Furley wrote:

On some stations there's a railway 'phone in a metal box, with a
notice saying that it can be used by passengers to contact the
signaller to obtain information about train running. I've seen these
at stations on the Settle-Carlisle line, which runs through some very
remote areas for example.

The first series of Michael Portillo's Great British Railway Journeys showed a
level grade crossing near a station with a sign and a phone requesting that
individuals crossing with animals call before crossing the track.