Spark phone booths...

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richms

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#2918057 24-May-2022 17:26

Groucho:

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'.

If you mean DAMPS - that was not their fault, there was no GSM 850 at the time since that was a USA/AU/NZ only band for analog, so they only had the choice of gear for the mess that was the USA at the time to replace the analog network with that would run alongside it. Govt said no to them having some 900MHz to go GSM. Silly Govt crippled them with DAMPS and then CDMA networks because of the band plan.

Richard rich.ms

Bung

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#2918086 24-May-2022 18:17

PolicyGuy:
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.

More than a little balderdash there. What special equipment do you need to renumber the dial numbers?

An earlier dial post https://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=95&topicid=171168

AKLWestie

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#2918090 24-May-2022 18:25

richms:

Groucho:

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'.

If you mean DAMPS - that was not their fault, there was no GSM 850 at the time since that was a USA/AU/NZ only band for analog, so they only had the choice of gear for the mess that was the USA at the time to replace the analog network with that would run alongside it. Govt said no to them having some 900MHz to go GSM. Silly Govt crippled them with DAMPS and then CDMA networks because of the band plan.

Wow, the good old DAMPS, and then CDMA, I remember those days!

That reminds me why many migrants coming to NZ in the 90's and early 2000s have 021 numbers. Many of them brought their GSM phones with them. And since there was only one GSM carrier back then, they all sign up to Bellsouth and later Vodafone.

1024kb

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#2918131 24-May-2022 19:37

There are still a few highly-profitable payphone installations around, not only profitable because of the near 100% of available time usage, but also the hefty premium charged for calls from those installations.

There's 1, sometimes 2 payphones on every unit of each prison on NZ. At 25c / min for landline calls & 35c for mobile calls, & inmates accessing the phones for 90% of a 6 hour day - that's grossing around $80 per day - lets go $500/week per payphone. Multiplied by say, 20 units per prison - $10k per week for next to zero investment post-install. Per prison.

if Spark is committed to abandoning payphones entirely then I can see a sweet little side-gig coming up.

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DjShadow

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#2918132 24-May-2022 19:48

Do any of the Wifi equipped Payphones still work? Ones I've been near of late are all dead

Senecio

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#2918139 24-May-2022 20:23

Even if I had need for a payphone, it would be useless to me. I wouldn't know how to call anyone unless I had my phone with me containing my contacts. I don't even know my wife's phone number.

KiwiSurfer

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#2918999 26-May-2022 16:21

richms:

If you mean DAMPS - that was not their fault, there was no GSM 850 at the time since that was a USA/AU/NZ only band for analog, so they only had the choice of gear for the mess that was the USA at the time to replace the analog network with that would run alongside it. Govt said no to them having some 900MHz to go GSM. Silly Govt crippled them with DAMPS and then CDMA networks because of the band plan.

They won the rights to some 900 MHz spectrum in the early 90's though so they could have gone with GSM. They ended up returning their rights (following a court case where Telstra sued the NZ Government) and eventually those rights went to Telstra who then sold them on to Vodafone.

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mattwnz

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#2919020 26-May-2022 17:00

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.

Isn't that how it was with some internet connections (think it was ADSL) until there was space in the cabinet?

Bung

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#2919071 26-May-2022 17:21

It wouldn't have been quite so bad with ADSL as it seemed like every 6 months or so the number of circuits on the Nokia cards doubled.

Technofreak

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#2919883 28-May-2022 23:33

PolicyGuy:

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.
😬

Some OWT's here.

The dials were exactly the same except for the numbering plate. Nothing special or difficult or different so far as the dial mechanism was concerned. It had exactly nothing to do with trade barriers.

All phones weren't black either though pretty well most of the old HB series (GPO 300 type) were black, there were other colours like red, green and white. The more modern 100 type came in many colours.

The Post Office Telephone Technician didn't go around installing phones. The Telephone Technician was the guy/gal keeping the telephone exchange switching equipment working. I wus won.

Perhaps in some places there were delays but where I worked an in place reconnection took from a matter of hours to two or three days, very very rarely was it any more than that and I suspect it wasn't much different in most places.

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