Portal:Telephones

A landline, or fixed line, is a telephone service provided to a subscriber via cable or wire, i.e. metal conductors or optical fiber. The term differentiates a telephone service from the now ubiquitous Wireless service. It is loosely described as plain old telephone service (POTS).

Landline services are traditionally provided via the outside plant of a telephone company, consisting of analogue copper wire originating from a telephone company's central office, or wirecenter. Landline service often includes services that use Internet Protocol via broadband services.

The outside plant comprises tiers of cabling between distribution points in the exchange area, so that a single pair of copper wire, or an optical fiber, reaches each subscriber location, such as a home or office, at the network interface. Customer premises wiring extends from the network interface ("NID") to the location of one or more telephones inside the premises. A landline can carry high-speed internet such as digital subscriber line (DSL) which links back to the digital subscriber line access multiplexer (DSLAM) within the central office, T-1/T-3, or ISDN. (Full article...)

Phablet (/ˈfæblət/, /-lɪt/) is a mostly outdated term that arose in the early 2010s to describe mobile devices combining or straddling the size formats of smartphones and tablets. The word is a blend word or portmanteau of phone and tablet.

By the late 2010s, the term had largely fallen into disuse, especially as phone sizes grew, in some cases to the size of a small tablet, up to 180 mm (7.1 in), with wider aspect ratios. They feature large displays for screen-intensive activity and may include a stylus. The form factor did not become popular until the arrival of the Galaxy Note in the 2010s. PC Magazine called the 1993 AT&T EO 440 "the first true phablet". (Full article...)

UK, Ireland, and NZ audible ringing tone

A ringing tone from the United Kingdom, Ireland, and New Zealand

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Australian ringing tone

Australia audible ringing tone

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European ringing tone

A European ringing tone per ETSI standard

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Japanese ringing tone

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French ringing tone

A French ringing tone

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North American ringing tone

Audible ringing tone from North America

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In telephony, a ringback tone (also ringback, ringing tone, or audible ringing) is a call progress tone heard by the calling party during a telephone call which indicates the called telephone is ringing. It typically consists of a repeating tone with a cadence resembling the ringing signal. In some systems, a ringback tone may be replaced with customized audio, such as music, sound effects, announcements, or advertising. (Full article...)

Cooper in 2007

Martin Cooper (born December 26, 1928) is an American inventor and electrical engineer. He is a pioneer in the wireless communications industry, especially in radio spectrum management, with 11 patents in the field. He is considered the "father of the (handheld) cell phone".

On April 3, 1973, Cooper placed the first public call from a prototype handheld portable phone (distinct from the car phone) while working at Motorola, from a Manhattan sidewalk to his counterpart at competitor Bell Labs. This was made possible by an experimental radio base station built to transmit on the low-power localized cellular spectrum, as opposed to traditional mobile radio telephones. Motorola built the station on the roof of Burlington House and hardwired it to the AT&T landline telephone network. For the next decade, Cooper lobbied the FCC and reprised the first handheld cellular mobile phone, leading the team that redeveloped it and brought it to market in 1983 when the first cellular network in the United States was launched to the public.

Cooper is co-founder of numerous communications companies with his wife and business partner Arlene Harris; He is co-founder and current Chairman of Dyna LLC, in Del Mar, California. Cooper also sits on committees supporting the U.S. Federal Communications Commission and the United States Department of Commerce. In 2010, Cooper was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering for leadership in the creation and deployment of the cellular portable hand-held telephone. He received the 2015 IEEE Masaru Ibuka Consumer Electronics Award for this work. (Full article...)