Slugmax wrote about poor cellular
phone call quality in his recent post,
noting that he and his wife are "both
old enough to remember when phone call
quality did not suck. It all makes me
want to go back to a landline and
tape-based answering machine."[1]
It's amusing that compression
technologies have worsened audio
quality in comparison to some of the
old analog technologies we used to
use.
As for a landline, I didn't want to
pay the local monopoly price for a
true landline. Nor did I want to pay
their competitors' VOIP price. So I
set up a VOIP account with one of
those generic VOIP providers. It
approximates landline quality (of
course, that depends on your codec
preferences and whether or not you're
talking to someone with a crappy cell
connection...). I've used a few
different VOIP providers over the
years since then, and my experience
is, the closer their facilities are to
you, the better. Nothing beats a short
ping time, no matter what the VOIP
people might try to tell you.
The other thing that I really like
about VOIP relates to Slugmax's
statement about going back to a
tape-based answering machine. Perhaps
that was meant in jest, but when I was
figuring out what equipment I'd need
to set up my VOIP account, I stumbled
across a forum where people were
discussing an analog telephone adapter
(or ATA) called the Grandstream HT502.
It's great asset: you can still dial
out with your rotary phone. Perhaps
Grandstream's newer ATAs have this
feature too. I don't know. I bought
the HT502 and it has been working
for years.
In any case, since I switched to VOIP,
I have an old black desk phone (with a
really classic ring... it always gets
comments) and an old school answering
machine. I love that I can hear people
leaving messages when I'm doing
something else, so I can decide
whether or not to call them back right
away. Sometimes, older really was
better. And it's stupid cool[2].
Well, sometimes. There's nothing
slower than dialing 10-digit numbers,
especially when all the digits are at
the high end...
One more thing: one of the most fun
things about having a rotary phone is
that people have uploaded all kinds of
retro telephone dial cards (those
little round cards that you put your
number on in the center of the dial).
So your choice of dial cards is almost
limitless.
[1]
gopher://republic.circumlunar.space/0/%7eslugmax/phlog/2019-08-24-crappy-cellular
[2]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1zYNrsx9Pw
