6 ms·

Only two? Around 1995 we had four phone lines: home, home office, fax, and modem. There were only three physical pairs, so two of the lines (I think the voice l

Only two? Around 1995 we had four phone lines: home, home office, fax, and modem. There were only three physical pairs, so two of the lines (I think the voice lines) came off one physical pair with a frequency division splitter. Some time later I saw a Pacific Bell truck and crew trenching the street. (We had underground utilities.) I excitedly asked them, "Are you running fiber?" "No, just more copper." I guess they saw the demand for lots of copper lines per house and decided to meet it! The underground phone lines did lead to some excitement one time. Their water sealing wasn't very good, and after a heavy rain the line would get noisy and clicky. During one of these episodes, we got a loud knock on the door: "San Jose Police! Open up!" I ran to the door and asked what was going on. One of the officers said, "We got a 911 call from this address. The dispatcher couldn't hear anyone on the line, and no one answered when they called back. So we're required to come out and investigate the situation." I replied, "That's odd, neither of us called 911. Oh... I think I know what may have happened. Come in and I'll show you." We went to the kitchen and I put the wall phone (remember those?) on speaker and had the officers listen. It was clicking up a storm! Then I asked them if they remembered the old rotary phones (they did). I explained how the phone dial worked by breaking and making the circuit N times for each digit you were dialing. And it must have been that in that flurry of clicks that the circuit was broken nine times, then once, then once again.

sirtaj 2y ago
In India it was pretty common for phones put in semi-public locations to have a lock on the dial to stop people making outgoing calls. But if you were motivated enough, you could still dial out by tapping the number out on the switch hook.
AndrewDavis 2y ago
> Some time later I saw a Pacific Bell truck and crew trenching the street. (We had underground utilities.) I excitedly asked them, "Are you running fiber?" "No, just more copper." During the Australian NBN^^ rollout. Where I used to live was on the border of a FTTC and a coax/DOCSIS one. My street had no pre-existing cable TV cable so you'd think no brainer to lay fibre. Nope, brand new coax. And because the street had no coax that meant no homes had an existing cable so they had to trench every driveway to connect it to the street. It would have been an absolute no brainer to run fibre then use the existing phone lines up driveways to their homes. Cheaper, and an easy upgrade path to full fibre. This was 2019. ^^Australia built a national broadband network. It was originally designed to be all fibre (except for remote places over satellite etc), but politics happened and it was changed to a multi technology mix which included DOCSIS, fibre to the node then vdsl for the last km or whatever, or fibre to the curb and vdsl up your driveway. And the government entity building it NBN was buying up old copper phone lines and coax.
- slow_typist 2y ago
  In Germany, the government of Helmut Schmidt (social democrats) planned to implement an optical network to every house in west Germany in 1981. In 1982 Helmut Kohl became chancellor, cancelled the 30 year plan and what we got was coax lines for cable TV. Thanks a lot, just imagine where Germany could be today … to be fair, a significant part of households gets their internet connection over the cable tv networks, but still it was a dumb decision. German article on the matter: https://netzpolitik.org/2018/danke-helmut-kohl-kabelfernsehen-statt-glasfaserausbau/ https://netzpolitik.org/2018/danke-helmut-kohl-kabelfernsehe...
  - felixg3 2y ago
    Don‘t forget that Helmut Kohl was also sharing a bed with the television industry at that time when optical networks couldn’t transmit analogue television.
    - lakomen 2y ago
      He was a filthy, corrupt man.
  - hgomersall 2y ago
    Similar story in the UK: https://www.techradar.com/news/world-of-tech/how-the-uk-lost-the-broadband-race-in-1990-1224784 https://www.techradar.com/news/world-of-tech/how-the-uk-lost... Standard neoliberal bullshit coupled with a lack of imagination as to how things like local-loop unbundling might be used to create a competitive market. The UK is now in a fairly good position re broadband, but it could be so much better.
satiric 2y ago
It might have dialed 112, as that sometimes also links to 911 (and 112 is much easier to accidentally dial).

sirtaj 2y ago

In India it was pretty common for phones put in semi-public locations to have a lock on the dial to stop people making outgoing calls. But if you were motivated enough, you could still dial out by tapping the number out on the switch hook.

AndrewDavis 2y ago

> Some time later I saw a Pacific Bell truck and crew trenching the street. (We had underground utilities.) I excitedly asked them, "Are you running fiber?" "No, just more copper." During the Australian NBN^^ rollout. Where I used to live was on the border of a FTTC and a coax/DOCSIS one. My street had no pre-existing cable TV cable so you'd think no brainer to lay fibre. Nope, brand new coax. And because the street had no coax that meant no homes had an existing cable so they had to trench every driveway to connect it to the street. It would have been an absolute no brainer to run fibre then use the existing phone lines up driveways to their homes. Cheaper, and an easy upgrade path to full fibre. This was 2019. ^^Australia built a national broadband network. It was originally designed to be all fibre (except for remote places over satellite etc), but politics happened and it was changed to a multi technology mix which included DOCSIS, fibre to the node then vdsl for the last km or whatever, or fibre to the curb and vdsl up your driveway. And the government entity building it NBN was buying up old copper phone lines and coax.

slow_typist 2y ago
In Germany, the government of Helmut Schmidt (social democrats) planned to implement an optical network to every house in west Germany in 1981. In 1982 Helmut Kohl became chancellor, cancelled the 30 year plan and what we got was coax lines for cable TV. Thanks a lot, just imagine where Germany could be today … to be fair, a significant part of households gets their internet connection over the cable tv networks, but still it was a dumb decision. German article on the matter: https://netzpolitik.org/2018/danke-helmut-kohl-kabelfernsehen-statt-glasfaserausbau/ https://netzpolitik.org/2018/danke-helmut-kohl-kabelfernsehe...
- felixg3 2y ago
  Don‘t forget that Helmut Kohl was also sharing a bed with the television industry at that time when optical networks couldn’t transmit analogue television.
  - lakomen 2y ago
    He was a filthy, corrupt man.
- hgomersall 2y ago
  Similar story in the UK: https://www.techradar.com/news/world-of-tech/how-the-uk-lost-the-broadband-race-in-1990-1224784 https://www.techradar.com/news/world-of-tech/how-the-uk-lost... Standard neoliberal bullshit coupled with a lack of imagination as to how things like local-loop unbundling might be used to create a competitive market. The UK is now in a fairly good position re broadband, but it could be so much better.

satiric 2y ago

It might have dialed 112, as that sometimes also links to 911 (and 112 is much easier to accidentally dial).