Phones and Black boxes

In order for you to be reading this page you must have at least some knowledge of modern telecoms. Most people use a personal computer and a modem to browse the Internet, however there are multiple ways of connecting to the outside world for both voice and data.

Talking

Until about twenty years ago nearly everybody used BT or its earlier incarnations like GPO telephones. This was a state owned monopoly, that was very inefficient and offered very little choice. Most customers had one phone line with at most two extensions (one in the hall and maybe one in the master bedroom) and they tried not to use it very much because it was terribly expensive. If you wanted to ring your sister in Australia, you had to remortgage the house and arrange everything weeks in advance. If your phone went wrong or if you wanted a special service like a second line you could wait for months for something to happen.

In the late seventies and early eighties, along came competition from the likes of Mercury for your calls, or cable for your phone company; also when BT was privatised by Maggie Thatcher, prices were forced down by the regulator Oftel. These days there are dozens of different phone companies and numerous options as to how to connect people. You can have two lines but you might be better off with call-waiting or varying ring tones. Our phones page gives you tips on the best way to set up your connection.

Data, Fax and Email

Twenty years ago, one could get modems of sorts. It was not uncommon to exchange data at 300baud or perhaps 1200 bits downstream but only 75bits per second upstream. Most people had no use for data so the only place where one saw such technology was perhaps the travel agent who could check holiday availability or flight details.

As the eighties progressed, fax machines reached a sensible price and people realised that you could use the phone for more than just speech. People started to buy modems for their PCs, but you could pay over a hundred pounds for a modem that struggled at 9600bps. Also, all you could connect to were bulletin boards, that had none of the graphic or audio content of the world wide web.

As the nineties came, modem speeds started to increase; every year saw a speed increase. First 14,400 then 19,200 followed by superfast modems at 28,800. At about this stage, the web was beginning to enter the public consciousness, with early browsers from mosaic and then netscape. Soon modems were capable of 33,600bps and audio or even video content started to be possible. However modems were getting near the maximum speed possible on normal phone lines. Firms like Rockwell and US Robotics brought out incompatible 56k protocols (K56flex and x2technology) to try and wring out the last bit of speed from analogue copper lines. Yet when these were unified in the present v90 standard, the fastest reliable connections that people could achieve were about 46,000bps or about six kilobytes per second. This isn't good enough to send CD quality sound down a phone line, never mind full screen video.

Because people want to use their computers for entertainment, as well as more mundane things like word processing, this requires ever faster connections to the outside world. To achieve this, there are other devices than simple modems, such as terminal adapters for ISDN, cable modems, ADSL modems and even satellite adapters. We have split our rundown into two pages. Firstly ISDN and BT highway, as these are easily available, and into ADSL, cable and others, which are less common.

Extra Features

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Last modified: April 15, 2002

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