Recently I bought a Western Electric model 2500MMG from an antique store here in Boston. I had always wanted one for decoration since they are THE phone that people think of when they think of a phone, they are iconic. However other than that, I was not looking to use it. To my amazement, I found they are fully able to be hooked up to a POTS (plain old telephone system) line and work fine in the modern age. Problem is, nobody has a landline anymore, and paying for one is too damn expensive, my apartment doesn’t even have phone lines run to it. However, the fact that this literally indestructible behemoth from 1970 can still work on modern phone lines (granted you have one), but my iPhone 4, literally less than half the age of that other phone, cannot connect to cellular anymore because “3G is too outdated” is absolutely astounding to me. I understand getting rid of old technology when its cost starts outweighing the benefits of keeping it around, but that seems a little excessive, a phone bought around 10 years ago is now completely useless, meanwhile a phone from 50 years ago works fine. Dedicated phones (or a phone protocol) need to make a comeback, just so we can standardize on a system to make calls that isn’t ever evolving. Realistically if I want good sound I would use the internet. I propose bringing back something like 2G which reaches far and wide, and having it be just for calls and SMS, meanwhile data would be carried over 4G, 5G, LTE, or what not. Doing this would allow for older phones to stay connected as… well… phones, while making people have to upgrade if they want the new speedy data stuff. But hey, that’s just my opinion.
my hcaptcha had a duck in it