Old 'Retro' Telephones on modern systems.

[danechip]

Hi All.

I've tried a search but to no avail.

If you have an old phone that used the pulse dialling, will it still work today?

I'm unsure myself now as i thought you needed a pulse-to-tone converter.

Does it having a modern 'BT431a' suggest it will work? This is what has been suggested on this debate on a facefook page.

This link looks outdated http://www.britishtelephones.com/pstconv1.htm

What am I missing here?

Thanks in advance, Dan.

 

[JohnD]

I have an old pulse-dialler as a spare, and it still works.

IIRC BT said, years ago, that they would continue to support pulse diallers "for the time being" with no commitment as exchanges would be upgraded and modernised. But they still seem to work. Perhaps modern exchanges are so cheap and flexible that it doesn't much matter to them. I doubt you would have grounds to complain if not, though.

 

[danechip]

Ok John, So BT will work, So it's safe to say other networks would follow suit?

I'm not sure how they work nowadays compared from when I worked in cable tele installation 20 years ago (damn, i'm getting on..)

I know cable/VM are a totally separate entity, do they still work with them as I remember my 'butt phone' had a selector switch for DTMF or Pulse and they both worked back in '95..

 

[bernardgreen]

Copper loop to the exchange is most likely to support pulse dialling. The bell should be converted from low impedance to high impedance other wise other phones in parallel may not ring properly.

Old phones ( hard wired ) when there was more than one phone on the line had low impedance bells in series, modern phones ( pluggable ) have high impedance bells ( sounders ) in parallel.

 

[JohnD]

don't know. Presumably they buy their switches from Siemens, Ericsson or someone, and they'll be fairly standard.

I believe most of the telecoms companies don't have their own networks and exchanges. Racal did; Colt and Hull do, Virgin, and BT. I think the others are just marketing fronts that rent capacity from BT.

 

[PBC_1966]

Anyone still on BT system X or system Y (a.k.a. AXE10) switches should have no problem, and I've not been following details so closely now I'm out of the country, but so far as I'm aware, as mentioned already BT has stated that it intends to continue to support it on the 21CN switches being rolled out.. Note that if you are on a BT/OpenReach line, then it doesn't matter whether you actually have BT as your provider or somebody else.

Many of the cable modems/adapters used on broadband cable networks support only DTMF dialing though, so if you have Virgin, TeleWest etc. cable service there's a good chance it won't work. A converter could be used, but these days it's also possible to pick up many older electronic PBX units just as cheaply, many of which will also do a DTMF-to-pulse conversion for outgoing calls, plus you would be able to make use of the other facilities (e.g. setting up a single speed-dial list so that you can use the same short code from any phone in the house).

 

[OwainDIYer]

The hardware to detect pulse dialling is the same as that required to detect on/off hook and time break recall. I did ask BT if they had tested a Tele 232 on their 21C network trial and they asked if I knew where they could get one to test. I suggested the BT Museum ... oh they sold that off.

Unfortunately the Panasonic KX-T range which are otherwise nice little PBXen and accept pulse dialling require DTMF * to access the speed dial feature.

 

[PBC_1966]

I did ask BT if they had tested a Tele 232 on their 21C network trial and they asked if I knew where they could get one to test.

You'd think they'd at least be able to rustle up a 746 without too much trouble.....

Unfortunately the Panasonic KX-T range which are otherwise nice little PBXen and accept pulse dialling require DTMF * to access the speed dial feature.

The KX-TD range has the system speed dialing prefix configurable, so you could set it to something like 1 for ease of use on a rotary phone (speed dialing on that PBX would then be codes 1000 to 1499).