💾 Archived View for zaibatsu.circumlunar.space › ~visiblink › phlog › 20190824 captured on 2024-08-25 at 02:39:14.
⬅️ Previous capture (2021-12-03)
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Slugmax wrote about poor cellular phone call quality in his recent post, noting that he and his wife are "both old enough to remember when phone call quality did not suck. It all makes me want to go back to a landline and tape-based answering machine."[1] It's amusing that compression technologies have worsened audio quality in comparison to some of the old analog technologies we used to use. As for a landline, I didn't want to pay the local monopoly price for a true landline. Nor did I want to pay their competitors' VOIP price. So I set up a VOIP account with one of those generic VOIP providers. It approximates landline quality (of course, that depends on your codec preferences and whether or not you're talking to someone with a crappy cell connection...). I've used a few different VOIP providers over the years since then, and my experience is, the closer their facilities are to you, the better. Nothing beats a short ping time, no matter what the VOIP people might try to tell you. The other thing that I really like about VOIP relates to Slugmax's statement about going back to a tape-based answering machine. Perhaps that was meant in jest, but when I was figuring out what equipment I'd need to set up my VOIP account, I stumbled across a forum where people were discussing an analog telephone adapter (or ATA) called the Grandstream HT502. It's great asset: you can still dial out with your rotary phone. Perhaps Grandstream's newer ATAs have this feature too. I don't know. I bought the HT502 and it has been working for years. In any case, since I switched to VOIP, I have an old black desk phone (with a really classic ring... it always gets comments) and an old school answering machine. I love that I can hear people leaving messages when I'm doing something else, so I can decide whether or not to call them back right away. Sometimes, older really was better. And it's stupid cool[2]. Well, sometimes. There's nothing slower than dialing 10-digit numbers, especially when all the digits are at the high end... One more thing: one of the most fun things about having a rotary phone is that people have uploaded all kinds of retro telephone dial cards (those little round cards that you put your number on in the center of the dial). So your choice of dial cards is almost limitless. [1] gopher://republic.circumlunar.space/0/%7eslugmax/phlog/2019-08-24-crappy-cellular [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1zYNrsx9Pw