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I agree that that would have made sense, but that was not the charge I paid. The charge was stupid and a scam, but it was only $0.50 a month, so too much trouble to try to avoid.

In the beginning, yes. But as tone dialing took over and became the "dominant flavor" here in Canada BELL stopped charging extra for tone dialing - and after a number of years started charging extra to maintain pulse fialing / rotary dial support. We paid that surcharge for several years before reiting our old green rotary dial wall phone.

They used to charge a rental for the phone too untill virtually everyone bought their own phones.

Inbound calls are free, as a 1-800 numbers (both charge me minutes on my mobile phone).

For "less than that", are you referring to a mobile phone, or a VoIP home phone that runs over the internet? I can't imagine a traditional POTS line that costs less.

What telco was that? In the US, analog mobile phones (first gen) were discontinued in 2008/09. T-Mobile is still keeping up first generation digital service (2G) until December 2022.

That must be a Canadian thing. Any traditional land line in the US still allows pulse dialing. I just used a rotary phone today. Now, VoIP telephone lines typically won't allow pulse - but some will.

That's why POTS is dying.

That's $45 a month for unlimited within a 12 mile radius and for-pay long distance.

Tracfone will sell you unlimited calls and texts anywhere in the US for $15/month and throw in a gig of data as well. If you don't actually _need_ unlimited then they have cheaper plans.

And if you're paying for broadband anyway, getting a phone number for Skype costs about $3 a month for 2000 minutes.

Bell Canada charged extra for pulse for at least 5 years (may have been 10) before we cancelled the dial phone, and soon after cancelled the POTS landline in favour of VOIP

Does an old rotary phone still work in today's technology?

Franklin Veaux Technology enthusiast, mad engineer, and tech startup founder.

Answered 3 years ago · Author has 37K answers and 482.7M answer views

Depends on your telecom provider. There?s some technical background. When you pick up the phone and hear a dial tone, your phone line is connected to a device called a ?digit receiver.? The digit receiver accepts numbers from the phone. Then, when it receives enough digits in the correct order, it disconnects and passes the numbers to the switching system that routes the call. Rotary phones send digits to the digit receiver in the form of pulses?makes and breaks of the phone line, spaced a certain time apart. Touch-Tone phones send the digits as sounds. Two different sounds at two different frequencies; each digit has a specific combination of frequencies. Now, digit receivers are (or at least, were) very expensive pieces of hardware. And if you?ve ever used a rotary phone, you know it takes longer to dial one than to dial a Touch-Tone phone. The pulses are spaced a certain length of time apart. Dialing a 9 or a 0 takes a couple seconds. The longer it takes, on average, to dial a number, the more digit receivers your phone company needs to have to handle a given volume of calls. And like I said, digit receivers are expensive. The telephone company was eager to dump support for rotary a long time ago, to save money. No rotary means fewer digit receivers, and the digit receivers don?t need to be able to detect numbers both by pulse and tone[1]. But in the US at least, the phone industry used to be regulated. To maintain backward compatibility with existing phones, telecom operators were required by law to continue supporting rotary dialing. The law no longer requires telcos to support pulse dialing, though I do not know when that changed. Today, some local exchanges still support pulse dialing and some dont. It all depends on what equipment they have.

I have my own version: buy a good new car that you like for cash, take good care of it, and keep it until it becomes a maintenance problem or you get really tired of it. Then repeat. The key difference in my plan is that every month I make a "car payment" to an investment account ($500 now but that may have to change) and that is what pays for the new car after tradein of the old one. This money also pays for things like registration, insurance, tires, and routine maintenance but if I've picked a good car these don't affect the balance that much. Of course I often keep cars for ten years (up to fifteen in two cases, a VW diesel and a Miata) so there is plenty of time to accrue the cash for the replacement. YMMV of course.

Well, my broadband is DSL, bundled over the phone line. It would likely be far more expensive if I switched to a "dry loop" without the dial tone. I like the reliability as well as the sound of my phone line, and I enjoy my old rotary phones. Sometimes I buy phones, test them on my line, clean them up, and sell them for a profit.

There is probably some kind of alternative, but it works for me as is. I'm aware that it would not work for many others, but I hate the sound quality and feel of holding a mobile phone. Reception and calls tend to be choppy depending on where I am.

Hmm, you'd think that an existing system wouldn't have to be an extra charge, since it's already established. Did it really cost that much to maintain pulse dialing? I suppose that was a way to push people off of it if that was their end goal.

I like my line as it is, and as silly as it sounds, I love that I can still pick up my early 70's Harvest Gold colored Western Electric 554 rotary wall phone in my kitchen and dial a call out; or my early 60's Turquoise colored WE princess rotary dial phone in my bedroom (lighted dial and transformer still work).

If AT&T cut rotary/pulse dial tomorrow, that would probably be enough motivation to make me cancel my land line in favor of a lower cost VoIP system. I'd likely take my internet service to another company as well

- the DSL isn't very fast any more. 3MB/s

Then you have a crappy plan. One that can't cost $40/mo. You should be able to do better than that for $10, $20 tops!

Cell phone. Without data service, even unlimited texting (what a scam), cell phone service is dirt cheap.

Early on they charged a premium for tone dialing (because they could get it). Later on, they charged a premium for pulse because it got to be a PITA and wanted to dump it.

Huh? Pulse or analog. I don't understand the question(s).

Yes, it was additional hardware that they had to *add* to the line to convert pulse to tone.

No, it wasn't a Canadian thing. Check your bill.

Actually, once the 5ess switch

Prior to that, special hardware was added to the stepper switches to handle tone dialing for each line, thus the surcharge.

Both my 300-series and 500-series desksets still work just fine.

$10 to $20 tops for a land line? I've never heard of a traditional Bell land line less than the $40 I pay (which includes tax/fees)... typically far higher. I Jewed them down as far as I could.

My cell phone is 5 cents per minute. Yes, I could get an unlimited talk/text plan for $10-20/mo -- but with my usage, my plan is far cheaper. 5 cents per minute equates to maybe $6 monthly cell bills, depending on usage; Always less than $10. I *could* have text messaging (I called to disable it), but the plan I'm on requires that text messages be 10 cents EACH, inbound or outbound... No thanks, I'll do without.