Hello Central!

Hello Central! was Originally Posted on August 31, 2007 by lavarock

Decades ago TPC (The Phone Company as we call it) was the only game in town, then things began to change.

In 1878 Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone. Then came Bell Telephone and in 1885 AT&T connected to those bells. In 1913 they bacame a monopoly. If you wanted telephone service, they were it.

In 1956, Tom Carter won a small victory when the courts agreed that he could make and sell a device that could attach to the telephone. Soon that would allow acoustic couplers like modems where you would place the handset in a device without modifying the telephone or touching the wires.

Then Tom went back to court in the famous Carterphone Decision case which found that devices could be attached directly t othe telephone line, devices not owned by Bell and/or AT&T. This led the way to fax machines, answering machines and cordless phones, etc. I cannot imagine how the would would be if those devices were all owned and controlled by one company.

I was always fascinated with phones from my earliest years. I remember having direct dialing in one town where I grew up and then moving to Princeton where you had a operator answer the phone to direct your call.

Years later I was at a hamfest and saw someone inside selling telephones (Stromberg Carlson as I remember, from Canada). This was a first and I bought 4 new ones a discount and took them out to show friends. I set them on the table and a guy asked me how many more I had and in what colors. That day I sold about 20 by going inside to a buy them in bulk and carrying them outside to sell.

My first answering machine/message announcer was a large thing similar to what we used in the radio station.

When I was a ham radio operator, I hooked up a touchtone pad to my walkie-talkie and made phone calls (we hams were at the forefront of the cell phone revolution).

Once as a demo, we transmitted a telephone call from my walkie-talkie through radio to a repeater to a phone line which dialed COMSAT. There a friend and fello ham linked my call into the upstream data to the ANIK satellite. My audio went up and back and back to me. I showed the Boy Scouts assembled that in an emergency, we hams could even grab satellite time and make a walkie-talkie be heard through 1/2 the world.

Over the years I have had my share of fun with phones, figuring out neat things to do with the equipment and lines. I would get two phone lines, couple them together and dial Operator on both and let the Operators talk to each other wondering what was up. I once took a desk phone apart, wired the switchhook with 110 volts and put a lamp on top. You would lift the receiver to turn on the lamp!

A company I worked for installed an MCI circuit for long distance. MCI was a railway company (or associated with one) and had microwave towers all along their tracks. This was very similar to telephone wires but seperate. They hooked them into phone lines and made their own telephone company. The MCI box sat between our phones and the phonecompany. If you dialed a long distance number, it detected that, intercepted the call, dialled locally into their DC office and dumped the call into their equipment, bypassing the phone companies long distance circuits. The phone company was less than thrilled and did little to quickly install lines to these boxes, even though they were legal.

I started using calling cards to redice long distance charges and found that things like the MCI and other calling cards were 5 cents a minute or less, well below the dollar or two a minute of the AT&T card. I then signed up for a calling plan called Big Zoo, where I dialled a local number (or toll free number) entered my codes and was calling long distance for 2.5 cents a minute.

Then I signed up with a company called Packet8 which used the internet for service. They get you an adapter (or a telephone) that plugs into the internet and gives you unlimited outbound calling for about $20 a month. My inbound number for that service is in Florida so my Mom can call me. Since the inbound number is in her local dialing area, it is a local call for her and free! So she can call me anytime free and I call all over the US for $20 a month.

Just when you think that is a good deal, along comes “soft phones” whereby you load software on your PC and talk PC to PC for free (worldwide). If you want to talk to someone not on a PC, you need to pay a fee to connect to a telephone line somewhere. Yahoo messenger and programs like that have soft phone ability.

Entering the scene is Asterick, a software PBX (private branch exchange or switchboard). This software simulates the telephone company with all of the bells (a bad pun) and whistles. It runs under Linux and allows you to have your own telephone company. You can create extensions, have voicemail, announce the time and weather to users, have music on hold, transfer calls, have conferences, and so on, all without any actual telephone equipment. Did I mention that the software is free. So is the operating system, just supply a PC and if desired, a telephone card to attach to the phone company. You can create a business telephone system and run it yourself! Your users may be in the same building, or they may be scattered around the world. They only need an internet connection and some software and perhaps a headset and mike.

There is a version of the software already configured and supplied with VMware so that you can run under windows! You take your PC, load VMware as a Windows application and within that window, run the PBX software. I set the thing up last night and had it running. I have to admit that I have a bit more expertese than most, but there are some simple directions.

If you want to play, go to http://nerdvittles.com/index.php?p=144 and download the software. I had to download the older versions as I could not find a “torrent” copy. TRhe hardest part was doing the downloads.

When I upgraded my Packet8 service to a whole-house phone, I was left with the original adapter. I was able to flash the software in that box to create a unit that plugs into my network and connects to this software just mentioned above. Thus I have a real telephone on the wall (I call it a wall telephone that is an extension off my own telephone system. It currently has no regular connection to the telephone company, but rather when it rings, I know it is one of my friends calling.

I could connect the computer to a regular telephone line and accept inbound calls (and use it as an answering machine/PBX) or to make real telephone outbound calls. With the Carterphone Decision, I guess I could let my friends have a local Big Island Hawaii dial tone, not that there are many people here to call. My friend Jeff has a similar setup in Florida and I have an extension off his PBX here in Hawaii, Without too much work we could link the systems together and I could forward him voicemails to pass all outbound Florida telephone calls to his system to be dumped into the phone lines there.

Now if only I had access to that satellite uplink again….

Anyway, communications have always fascinated me, starting with telephones, CB, Ham radio, the internet, satellites and even this blog.

We started out having to pick up a telephone and say “Hello Central”, now it is “Hello World” and beyond!