10 forgotten wonders of 1980s homes

On 12/29/2015 11:24 PM, Christian Gauger-Cosgrove wrote: I'll defer to the experts; all this clicky-clicky stuff with "we don't offer that feature" are very old memories. Evolution of the telco networks has been interesting. I remember that my grandmother had a 2-digit phone number and the linemen who worked for the local telephone outfit also repaired radios on the side (She had a big Zenith with the auto-station seeking gizmo in her parlor). At the same time, our family's phone number sticks in my mind: Sheffield 2118-W (we were on a party line). When we purchased our current home (with some acreage), there was an easement through the land documented hardware in the soil here and there. It was replaced at some point by a buried pair of coaxial lines (the test points still exist). When I was doing some excavation, I called in the line-mapping service who verified that the stuff was dead. There are still warning signs with a "Call ENTerpirse xxxx and ask for Operator 7 before digging" legend--some of the signs have been overgrown with the wood of trees that they were attached to. Great fun. No one seems to know when the line was abandoned. Now, the buried copper that serviced our telephones on this road is being replaced by fiber hung on the existing electrical utility poles because the buried cable is apparently sliding down the hill and would be very expensive to replace with like copper. I have a bunch of boxes sitting on a concrete pad on my property that connects the existing buried local copper with the fiber--I got to see what an 1800-pair copper cable looks like. I read an article recently that in the US, only 8 percent of the population relies on POTS exclusively. Currently, I'm waiting for more upstream capacity before I can get 20Mbps DSL--right now, I'm existing on 1.5Mbps, but the local telco did send me a VDSL2 modem free of charge. When that happens, I'm dropping POTS service as it's just not worth the monthly fees and taxes. Dry loop after that. All of this has me wondering how long it's going to be before POTS completely disappears from the infrastructure. I've been experimenting with one of the Obihai VoIP boxes and have been pleasantly surprised at the quality. I haven't tried yet to see if the 554 rotary dial wall phones in my garage and shop will still work. They were installed in 1980--so that ties this in with the subject material. I will say this--that the personal service that I received in the 1980s and early 90s was amazing. Nothing like what it is now, which can involve waiting on hold for an hour before talking with a remote voice a thousand miles away who has no clue as to what's going on. Life in the boonies 12 wire miles from the CO... --Chuck