cyril7:
Please no comments on hacking on the forum, its a family show 😀

@Gurezaemon:

 

I remember feeling very clever as a kid in the 80s, saving the 6c call charge by furiously tapping the cradle the number of times needed to make 10. I.e. to call a 2, you tapped 8, to call 7, you tapped 3.

 

We had easier in Brazil, where pulse dialling followed the US standard i.e. one tap for one, two taps for two and so on. 

No wonder there was so much wiretapping in American movies if they didn't even bother to encrypt the phone numbers! 😁

freitasm:

 

@Gurezaemon:

 

I remember feeling very clever as a kid in the 80s, saving the 6c call charge by furiously tapping the cradle the number of times needed to make 10. I.e. to call a 2, you tapped 8, to call 7, you tapped 3.

 

 

We had easier in Brazil, where pulse dialling followed the US standard i.e. one tap for one, two taps for two and so on. 

 

This was all a Non-Tariff Trade Barrier to keep the Plessey phone factory (in Porirua IIRC) in business.
NZ phone dials were exactly backwards to the UK ones, so you needed 'special' equipment to make them, and it wasn't worth the while for large overseas manufacturers to interrupt their 'normal' production to make what would be a tiny quantity by their standards of special NZ market phones. 

It's also the reason we dial "111" to get emergency services, while they call "999" in the UK - it's the same pulse pattern, so that while the handset was "NZ special", the exchange equipment was "UK Standard"

Remember that this was in the 'good old days' where all telephones were black, had a rotating dial, and were supplied only by the Post Office and only on rental. You could not buy a phone from anyone, and having more than one in a home was extremely unusual. Phones could only legally be installed by a Post Office Telephones Technician, and getting one installed took weeks or months. Even getting an installed but disconnected phone re-activated would usually take a few weeks.
😬

We would do the collect call thing for being picked up, which I am sure the staff knew was going to be hungup on. Did they ever automate the collect call things here?

PolicyGuy: Remember that this was in the 'good old days' where all telephones were black, had a rotating dial, and were supplied only by the Post Office and only on rental. You could not buy a phone from anyone, and having more than one in a home was extremely unusual. Phones could only legally be installed by a Post Office Telephones Technician, and getting one installed took weeks or months. Even getting an installed but disconnected phone re-activated would usually take a few weeks.
😬

 

Dad installed a second phone himself once, and got an angry call from the post office in return.

Things took a while to change though: Remember that prior to the launch of "XT" in 2009, you couldn't connect a non-Telecom-supplied cellphone either!

PolicyGuy:

 

Remember that this was in the 'good old days' where all telephones were black, had a rotating dial, and were supplied only by the Post Office and only on rental. You could not buy a phone from anyone, and having more than one in a home was extremely unusual. Phones could only legally be installed by a Post Office Telephones Technician, and getting one installed took weeks or months. Even getting an installed but disconnected phone re-activated would usually take a few weeks.
😬

 

I remember my parents buying a replacement push button phone (a beige Statesman from The Warehouse?) very early on.  Just had to look out for the Telepermit sticker which verified it would work on the NZ network!  When they moved into their house in the early 1970s they had to wait six months until another subscriber literally died and freed up a line to get a phone connected.

Groucho:

 

When they moved into their house in the early 1970s they had to wait six months until another subscriber literally died and freed up a line to get a phone connected.

 

For some copper based rural BB subscribers this is often still true. 

By pure coincidence, I was reading this story a few days ago: https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/on-the-inside/467621/the-reminders-of-a-telco-past-still-standing-today and wondering how much usage do payphones still get today? I suspect it's very, very little.

quickymart:

 

By pure coincidence, I was reading this story a few days ago: https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/on-the-inside/467621/the-reminders-of-a-telco-past-still-standing-today and wondering how much usage do payphones still get today? I suspect it's very, very little.

 

There is no coincidence in PR, They would have staged that article either by writing it as a press release or just paying for it.

I remember working at Telecom in the late 90s (before everyone had a cellphone) and I recall them pushing phonecards like they were collectors items and were a great investment (I never invested in them personally). I heard later on that some people who invested a lot into phonecards took a (fairly major) bath once the value of them plummeted.

quickymart:

 

I remember working at Telecom in the late 90s (before everyone had a cellphone) and I recall them pushing phonecards like they were collectors items and were a great investment (I never invested in them personally). I heard later on that some people who invested a lot into phonecards took a (fairly major) bath once the value of them plummeted.

 

Yip, I gotta a  bunch'o'cards somewhere, - never actually paid real money for them thou ..

. for a while at T/com conferences, giving out  your nations P/cards to international delegates was the thing...

sounds a bit like NFTs

From memory, they became especially worthless after the new payphone network (which was incompatible with the previous one) was rolled out in 1999.

freitasm:

@Gurezaemon:

I remember feeling very clever as a kid in the 80s, saving the 6c call charge by furiously tapping the cradle the number of times needed to make 10. I.e. to call a 2, you tapped 8, to call 7, you tapped 3.

We had easier in Brazil, where pulse dialling followed the US standard i.e. one tap for one, two taps for two and so on. 

nztim:

freitasm:

 

We had easier in Brazil, where pulse dialling followed the US standard i.e. one tap for one, two taps for two and so on. 

 

Same almost everywhere else in the world, NZ was just backwards

Like how Telecom stubbornly insisted on an analogue mobile network despite their only local competitor Bell South (and the rest of the world) was digital?  'You need to roam overseas?  Sure, here's a totally different handset and something called a "SIM card" that will never catch on'.