[Telecom] The crystal clear quality of a Long Distance Telephone Call

The Bell System histories quietly point out that during WW II they lowered the bandwidth to squeeze more channels on scarce toll lines. I think it became 3 Hz or maybe 2.5 Hz. After the war there was such a high demand for service they continued this for a while. How long I don't know. This is one thing the Bell System didn't brag about. I would imagine having a critical business conversation over long distance during the war would not have been easy.

IMHO, a landline long distance call sounds better today than it did say 20 years ago. While connections 20 years ago were quite good, there was still some slight background noise and it made it clear you were on a toll call. Today it sounds really good.

One limiting factor today is station equipment. A good corded phone is superior to cordless phones. Further, many cordless users stray too far from the base station or near interference and degrade the signal. Seems like most residences use cordless phones today.

They came out with a replacement handset for the widespread 500 set "G" model ("K"?) which does sound better. (My 20 year old Panasonic phone has excellent sound quality.) But as long as a 500/2500 set is in good condition it will offer very good sound. Even a 300 set with "F" components sounds good (though admittedly the modules in my 302 set date from 1950, perhaps 1940 modules wouldn't sound as good.)

I've used pre-1938 phones (candlestick and 202 set) and they don't sound very well. They function, you can get a message across, but not all that great. Note that the "F" modules were retrofitted to sticks and 202s.

The Bell System never generated huge "profits". It only made a modest return on its investment. Be assured that over the years management most certainly did look for economies. If a new product proved too expensive to manufacture or service it was not offered. Manual was converted to dial when, and only when, the economics of dial--in that particular exchange--made dial preferable.

It wasn't until well after WW II that the idea of universal service for all truly took hold. The Bell System sought universal service and low prices, but there was a limit to how low they were willing to go. Before say 1955, telephone service, even message rate 4-party line, was simply too expensive for many people to afford. By 1955 wages had climbed enough and telephone rates stabilized that the vast majority of people could afford a phone. Long Distance was a luxury only for the wealthy until about 1963 for similar reasons. People made do with letters. Until about 1971 long distance was still something most people used sparingly at home. Around 1971 they introduced late night DDD discounts.

The big difference was that the first priority was service, not profits. Engineering, not marketing, was the focal point.

After divesture marketing became supreme, engineering secondary.

Ironically, today I used my cell phone for a personal business call. There was nasty echo on the line and I had trouble dealing with the other person. My prior analog phone had much better quality. My cell phone is a nice convenience, but I don't like it very much. If they weren't pulling the plug on analog, I'd still use that.

I don't understand how swarms of people just have their cell phone _literally_ attached to their ears. I don't like the idea of talking in public where outside noise is a distraction and others can hear your conversation. I miss the old oak phone booths with the little chair and table, light and fan.

SNIP

As on old analog modem jockey, I see a similar "lowering of expectations" in data networking. In the 1970-1990 days of private WANs, users expected "instant" turnaround on computer inquiries, etc. Today, we seem to accept all manner of variable and uncontrolled delay on the WWW (World-Wide Wait)

The trade-off of course is cost.

--reed

I found that to be the case with old 900MHz and 5.8GHz phones. But these=20 DECT cordless phones I have now are rock solid. They operate around the=20

The "slight background noise" was artificially produced, and injected into the calls for precisely the reason you cite: it was added to the call to make it clear you were talking on a long-distance circuit.

Bell Labs engineers had to add a "noise" generator to the L carrier design because customers were so used to background noise on earlier carrier circuits that they assumed a lack of background sound meant the call had been disconnected, and they would hang up without reason.

Bill Horne

That's true today with VoIP systems. For example, Cisco's VoIP system has an option to add "comfort noise" to calls. The noise is generated by the telephone, not the network; most VoIP systems detect (relative) silence and compress it down to a "no sound" flag. The phone on the far end either makes no noise (and thus sounds, to people used to analog telephones, like the call has been disconnected), or generates "comfort noise" to simulate the slight hiss of a POTS line in good repair.

There is such a thing as "too clean," I guess...

Our Call Center management had similar complaints with calls placed on hold on my Nortel Meridian-1 PBX: Calls placed on hold were so quiet callers frequently thought they'd been disconnected. We had no "comfort noise generator" and while Music on Hold was one possible solution there were contentious issues within the call center itself regarding exactly what the "music" would consist of. Although those managers couldn't agree on the MOH content they did agree that I should introduce some "keep-alive noise" to my PBX.

Al

At tiems I run a "beep-beep-beep" tone burst every ten seconds on my Comdial system. There is a royalty free tunes website that can be loaded on a USB player.