2 Comments

  1. And I really wish Jack hadn’t lobbied as hard as he did. The auction based system we have for phonewords was introduced under the guise of “efficient allocation” but only pursued by the Government so they could make money from a “scarce national resource”. But telephone numbers are as scarce as grocery item barcodes – industry self-regulates those and there is no tax in sight.

    Plus, there is something bizarre about investing in phonewords at the same time as net connections are making numbers redundant.

    By the way, do you know that telephone numbers were introduced because of an outbreak of measles? In the days of a manual switchboard callers asked for each other by name and the operator “knew” which plug hole connected to which name. Except when an outbreak of measles hit the town the local Doctor was concerned that communication would fail if both switchboard operators got sick, so everyone got told their “number” and you asked by number not name – hence deskilling the operators. That is, numbers predated automatic dialling.

  2. I’ve worked a plug and cord board. For ummm Link Paging, I think it was. And nah I’m not that old. The term ‘legacy technology’ predates PC’s y’know!

    We don’t do everything the Americans do. It’ll be interesting in a Skype world, what will happen with phone numbers.
    And no, I’m not saying Voip will win the day. Where’s the money in it, I ask ya?

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