Re: WCIT outcome?

[t.p. <[e-mail]>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "David Morris" <[e-mail]>
Cc: <[e-mail]>
Sent: Wednesday, January 02, 2013 10:16 PM
>
> On Wed, 2 Jan 2013, [e-mail] wrote:
>
> > At one point there was something that said one phone in each home
had to be
> > directly wired without a plug. I don't know if this was a
regulation, a phone
> > company rule, or just a suggestion, but it also fell by the wayside
after
> > Carterphone.
>
> May have varied by baby bell, but in Michigan, you could have as many
> jacks as you wished, but you had to lease them all from the telco.
There
> may have been a rule about having at least one hard wired phone, I
don't
> recall. In those days, the telco owned and was responsible for all
inside
> wiring.
>
> > I certainly saw acoustic coupled equipment in use long after
Carterphone, but
> > in my experience it was because of general intertia/unwillingness to
do the
> > necessary engineering, not because of the lack of connectors.
>
> Probably more to do with portability of accoustic couplers and the
lack of
> provisioning in motels, etc. for jacks.

What a parochial discussion this has become!

Going back to the ITU-T (remember them:-), they, or their predecessors,
defined the interfaces, such as R, S, T, U, and it was then up to
individual governments to proscribe how far the national monopoly
extended.  The USA has a reputation for being liberal whereas where I
was, the monopoly PTT owned the wiring in my house, in my office and
everywhere else which, de facto, gave them a monopoly over the CPE.

One of the achievements of the EU (or its predecessors), perhaps its
only noteworthy achievement, was to pressurise member states to limit
the national monopoly, which in turn made the kind of telecommunications
we have now possible (outside America).

I suspect that large parts of the world have yet to get there.

Tom Petch