Perhaps familiarity breeds contempt? The telephone handset has become such an integral part of everyday business life that it's easily taken for granted. However, half the people in the world are said to have never used any kind of phone. Today, telephone handsets have become part of the Internet and in the future may well become indistinguishable from mobile phones. A look at the telephone's past might help predict its future.

Ever wondered why the posts used for hanging telephone lines are still commonly referred to as telegraph poles? Well, when Alexander Graham Bell (right) was granted a US patent for the telephone back in 1876, it was viewed as an excellent replacement for the telegraph. Think of the military implications, for example. There's no need to learn Morse code any more. Orders can be directly conveyed by phone to someone who has had very little training. Germany's Siemens appears to have made the first military field phones only a few years after Bell's original patent.

The way in which people answer a phone call varies enormously. What Bell himself suggested as the proper greeting for answering a phone call was not something familiar such as "Hello" but a more formal "Ahoy", a nautical term. In other cultures, the standard greeting translates into English as "Speak" or "Go ahead". Alternatively, people would answer by saying their own telephone number. In bygone days, of course, the upper classes felt it was beneath them to answer a call initially. Hence they'd require a minion to pick up the phone.

As ownership of telephones grew beyond elite, the benefit of being able to speak directly to customers and suppliers was swiftly recognised by both businesses and governments. Initially, only the seriously rich could afford their own private telephones. Significantly, the first coin-operated telephone box is credited to another American inventor, William Gray of Connecticut, and dates back to 1889. Each nation has its own favourite form of public telephone box. However, in Britain and many other parts of the world, the iconic “red” (K6) telephone box designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott to commemorate the Silver Jubilee of Britain's King George V in 1935 still lives on. Just like the Internet, there have always been those who have found a means to fool a coin box into thinking it has received a payment when the coins have actually been spirited away. An alternative to the public phone was the “party” line whereby several residencies share the same line on a first-come, first-served basis.

Much of the technology behind the telephone remained virtually unchanged for one hundred years. The biggest breakthrough was the introduction of the automatic branch exchange based on an invention by yet another American, Almon Strowger. Stowger's exchanges dispensed with the need for a human operator by using a series of switches. Automatic exchanges thus gave us global access to a single telephone network via a universal “dialtone”. People would pick up the handset, wait for the audible “dial tone” and then dial the number.

Some countries—notably  parts of the USA—were actually very slow to roll out automatic phone exchanges. When Sean Connery direct dialled somebody in Russia in a James Bond film without going through a human operator, audiences in middle America laughed in disbelief. President John F Kennedy was famously once asked by a small town US dweller, if America was so great why did the local telephone company still have a human operator?

The value of installing a private automatic branch exchange (PABX)—better known as a “switchboard” —was swiftly recognised by large firms, governments and other organisations. PABX enabled key employees to have a handset or an “extension” phone sitting on their desks. Just like VCRs, however, few employees ever know how to use more than 10 per cent of an extension phone's inherent functions.

Telephones started to be radically modernised when the world of telephony collided with the IT sector to create the first truly digital telephone exchanges. In Britain, the first truly digital exchange—known as System X—went live on 1 July 1980. The immediate benefit was to allow digital (tone) dialling handsets to replace the former rotary dial telephones. Phone hackers soon learnt how to make free calls over digital connections. Instead of tapping out a sequence of numbers using the handset's cradle, with digital networks phone “jackers” like Captain Crunch learnt how to imitate the tones used to dial numbers. Capt Crunch was so named because he found a whistle in a box of breakfast cereal, which exactly matched the tones used by the telephone exchanges.

 At the same time that digital exchanges were introduced, the practice of hard-wiring handset onto the network was replaced by handsets with jackplugs that plugged straight into wall sockets. The US was instrumental in promoting the RJ45 (registration jack) plug as a near universal standard for handsets. In the eighties, the telephone companies (telcos) attempted to promote a new worldwide digital telephone system—known as the ISDN (integrated services digital network)—on the back of digital exchanges. The attempt largely failed since a key part of the ISDN was the ability to make video calls. Nobody liked being seen onscreen; especially women who wanted to look their best and would insist on “booking” a video call, defeating the whole object.

Quite quickly businesses realised that ISDN lines could be “hijacked” for data networking rather than telephony. Simultaneously with  the Internet burgeoning,  ISDN was used for Internet access. Before ISDN came along, computer freaks had been harnessing telephone lines for datacomms for years. They started off with an acoustic coupler, which simply fitted over the end of a telephone handset, before moving onto a dedicated box of tricks called a “modem”.

The Internet's popularity fuelled a growing recognition that telephone calls could be made via VoIP (voice over IP) technology rather than having to be sent through the telephone exchanges/switches, which the telcos operated. Internet routers cost a fraction of the price of a telephone exchange. Yet, VoIP technology matured slowly and endured a reputation for unreliability for years. As Internet connections got faster, call quality increased. This resulted in the introduction of dedicated VoIP telephones that plugged straight into the Internet rather than the good old existing phone systems run by the telcos, affectionately known as the PSTN (public switched telephone network). The biggest benefit to VoIP was low cost telephone calls, especially international ones, because the ISPs (Internet service providers) charged less for their services than telcos. Thousands of low cost telephone call suppliers have sprung up on the back of VoIP technology.

Today there are nearly 1.3 billion telephone lines installed around the world. Curiously one of the places, with the highest number of telephone lines per 100 people is Bermuda. This scores 90 out of 100 people, according to figures from the ITU - International Telecommunications Union. Its latest figures from 2007 show that some countries are experiencing an actual decline in the numbers of phone lines. Between 2002 and 2007, the number of lines in India, for example, declined by about one per cent. One reason for this is that many people are swapping over to mobile phones. Globally there are around three billion mobile phones in existence. Indeed, mobiles are so popular that currently the main reason for installing a new phone line is to gain access to broadband internet.

How will the telephone handsets evolve over the next few years? Firstly, all future handsets will have access to company and public telephone number databases. All they'll need is a small screen and 12 keys. France, for example, has run a system called Minitel since 1981 whereby the phone handset is actually a terminal. Minitel is, in effect, a videotext system as was the UK's Prestel. All “pages” on a videotext service can be accessed by the pressing the ten digits plus the star (*) and hash (#) keys. Minitel and Prestel were both established to enable users to easily look up telephone numbers in a database.  It isn't difficult to predict, therefore, that future handsets will have built-in screens for accessing the likes of Yellow Pages. Furthermore, VoIP will undoubtedly replace traditional, switched telephony. The UK's entrenched operator, BT, has announced its intention to build a 21st century network (21CN), which will be entirely IP based. Such systems are generally referred to as NGNs (Next Generation Networks).

Another prediction is that three mainstream technologies that will shortly collide within telephony— namely VoIP, cellular (mobile) and Wi-Fi/WiMax. Many handsets, which support both 3G/cellular and Wi-Fi (one which does 3G plus WiMax), are already available. Additionally, a standard like UMA (unlicensed mobile access) enables the same handset to make a VoIP call over Wi-Fi in the office or home and a regular cellular call over 3G whilst on the move. Employees will soon be given one of these “converged” handsets to replace the switchboard extension phone sitting on their desks. This will be particularly true as the practice of 'hot-desking', whereby employees have no permanently assigned desk, becomes more prevalent.

The biggest question mark hanging over the future of telephone handsets is whether they will support video calling like they all do in Sci-Fi movies. Despite the widespread availability of video telephony in mobile phones, it still isn't used by majority of the people. Acceptance of the necessity for video seems to be a very gradual process. X

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