A Roundup of Home Phone Service

Communication holds a significant role in our lives, man is a social animal whose entire life depends on communicating with others. Back in the day, all humanity used to live as a closely-knit family but when man started exploring the world and went on long journeys. That was the time when the need for long-distance communication was felt for the first time. As time passed by and humans settled to far-fetched lands, the need to remain in touch grew even stronger, and need is the mother of invention. Subsequently, it was this need that compelled humanity to form some means of long-distance communication.

A Brief History of Communication Mediums

Back in the day as there was no technology for long-distance transmission, communication used to be carried out through letters which were delivered through messengers. These were people who used to travel long distances to physically hand over these handwritten messages to their recipients, just like an early form of a postman. But this took quite a while and usually the information when received was outdated. So there was a sense of urgency in sending important and sensitive information quickly, and this sense of urgency ultimately allowed humans to make wired transmission mediums. These mediums used metal wires to send analog voice signals over them.

The earliest form of this transmission was formulated in the shape of a telegram, a massively successful and the only long-distance communication device of that time which was popular in mid 19th century to early 20th century. In a telegram, two distinct sounds were classified as dots and dashes which were transmitted to their receiver and the receiver used the telegram syntax to formulate the actual message from these sounds. This was also slow and inefficient because of serval complications that were a part of the process of converting dots and dashes into alphabets and then making sentences out of them.

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Invention of Home Phones

But all this changed in 1876 when a gentleman by the name of Alexander Graham Bell made the infamous first phone call to his friend Watson. Bell then panted this technology and founded Bell Telephone Company which we know today as AT&T. This is a piece of information most people know but a few know about the actual first long-distance call which was also made by Graham Bell again to Watson in 1915 from New York to San Francisco.

By the mid 20th century the home phone became the most used centerpiece of mankind’s communication network. The sheer dominance of this technology can be observed in such a way that even after more than a century this technology is still used in our houses, although there have been quite modern modifications made to this technology over time.

Landline Technology

The traditional home phone technology pretty much works the same way it did back in the day. This service is called a landline, and it uses standard copper wires and cable poles to carry voice signals to a telephone exchange. From that exchange, the number is routed to the recipient exchange and this routing is based on the telephone number. The recipient exchange then routes the incoming call to the right connected node which is the recipient’s home phone connection. In the past, this routing was done manually but with time and technological evolution, this process has been automated.

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Landlines are considered a reliable source of communication because of a solid infrastructure that has been in place for more than 150 years, plus the phone wires are solid and much more resilient towards outside factors. Most landline sets don’t even need electricity to work and can even work during power outages. However, despite all this the traditional landline is also going obsolete as there are a lot of hurdles and checkpoints in this communication network that increase the overall cost of service, and also decrease the quality. As a result, there is a new technology on the horizon that is purely internet-based and eliminates these wired loops of landline.

Modern Home Phones

Talking about the modern form of home phone the major credit behind its advancement should be given to the internet. As the internet has further modernized many existing technologies the same is the case with home phones.

The technology which the internet introduced in the field of voice communication, in general, is VoIP. It is an internet-based protocol that is used by many telecommunication giants, today we have Spectrum home phone which is completely working over VoIP technology. There are many other telecommunication companies that are using the VoIP technology to deliver home phone service to their customers. VoIP has already been integrated into our current home phone systems, but here the question is what is this technology called VoIP and how does it work?

VoIP Service

VoIP or voice-over-internet protocol is a self-explanatory term. Although, for a better explanation, it is a protocol that are algorithms and procedures that converts analog voice modulating signals and convert them in digital data. This digital data is in form of data bits which are standard transmission data blocks for the internet. The conversion of voice in digital allows it to be carried over to the receiver’s end. This means that the traditional transmission technique through copper telephone lines has been eliminated with the introduction of VoIP.

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Another major advantage of VoIP service is that it can not only convert voice into digital data but holds the potential to receive data in both analog and digital form and convert them into voice signals. This allows a VoIP user to easily call anyone that has a standard landline and doesn’t restrict both parties to use a VoIP infrastructure.

Advantages of VoIP

VoIP is significantly cost-effective as only internet is required for voice transmission, and it is not hardwired or doesn’t use a landline, so there are no infrastructure costs or heavy call charges. Most computer applications for voice communication like Skype are also based on VoIP, this is why a user can call any telephone number through this application without the need for a home phone. Moreover, since now there has been an inclusion of VoIP in standard phone sets, this made them more feature-heavy.

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Modern home phones of today have features like call blocking, call forwarding, conference call, caller id, automated voice messaging, and E911 which are immensely useful during an emergency. Since VoIP phones sets are not hardwired they also allow a limited amount of mobility to a user. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that the inclusion of VoIP has given mobile phone-like features to a standard home phone and has saved this technology from going completely obsolete.

Conclusion

The home phone is a very beneficial technology regarding its cost and reliability. The mainstream use of cell phones has become an existential threat to their existence, but ever since the modern iteration of home phones and the invention of VoIP projects a new hope for this technology. Hopefully, VoIP would become a more mainstream technology and will breathe a new life into this dying home phone market, which has such a rich history encompassing more than a century.

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