Digital or Analogue Calls?

Oh how things have changed since the first telephone in 1876 !

What started as a way to get multiple telegraph messages across the same lines soon developed into speech and nowadays we have millions of conversations travelling the world at great speed.

Years ago, everything relied on a diaphragm to change sounds into a current and at the other end of the line, the current was used at the other end to convert it back into sound.

Nowadays, although the mouthpiece and earpiece are of similar technology, the signal is digitised and chases at light speed down optical circuits. Also is the more recent development of VOIP - Voice Over IP.

What is VOIP ?  This is the technology of sending the audio signal down a digital line through the Internet, racing around the world and converting it back to an audio signal at the other end by a computer or similar device. The benefits?

One of the main benefits is cost. Conversation Audio isn't bandwidth hungry, so it can travel down your Internet connection even if you don't have a very fast connection.  If you are already paying for a broadband connection, you can have endless calls to other VOIP connections for "free" - there is no charge for the length of time you spend on a call, nor is the charge of the call determined by distance, so long as they have Internet.

Other services are available too, SKYPE is a popular VOIP service which offers the facility to allow callers to call Landline numbers which are NOT on the Internet by taking the signal into a local phone exchange over the Internet, and then converting the signal to regular audio for the final distance to the receiving telephone.  The benefit?  Long Distance Calls for the price of a local charge.

There are many benefits to VOIP, and as the service continues to improve and expand, we can see that most or all telephones we be this way.

So the choice remains yours, for now. But VOIP will continue to bite away at the old Analogue phone service.

End of an Era

Today is a landmark day in the field of technology advancement.  For by the end of today, the last of the analogue television transmitters will be shut off, meaning that the 5 year changeover to Digital will be complete.

But interestingly, it also marks another landmark, for analogue carried something else alongside the television pictures and sounds that we all enjoyed. It also carried a teletext service.

 

 

 



Ceefax was launched in 1974 and was the worlds first teletext service.  Containing graphics and text it rotated on a sequence of pre-delivered pages and you could get News, Sport, Recipes and Holidays to name just a few.

The system was fast, but limited because of it's "one way" delivery. This was challenged when the Internet became more popular, and people would only use it to check the football scores while visiting the grandparents!

Now replaced by "the red button", the digital service is able to offer a lot more, including additional video content and information to make the viewer experience more enjoyable.

So we thank you Teletext, we thank you Ceefax, for bringing on tap information to the masses.  We will miss waiting for the scrolling pages to bring us the news we want to read. Silently you will disappear as the analogue transmitters are finally shut down.

And as you take a bow as the final curtain closes, please make sure you don't get run over by the super fast broadband as it whizzes past.