Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!casbah.acns.nwu.edu!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request From: john@icjapan.info.com (John Higdon) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Why Are Pulse Dial Phones Still Around? Message-ID: <16088@accuvax.nwu.edu> Date: 15 Jan 91 11:53:45 GMT Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu Reply-To: John Higdon Organization: No Hills, No Cows, Tokyo JAPAN Lines: 32 Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 11, Issue 40, Message 10 of 11 In article <72169@bu.edu.bu.edu> jet@uh.edu (J. Eric Townsend) writes: >And the rest of us have little choice. UH has no real organizational >level telecommunications policies. Most departments still have the >rotary *only*, department level switching units. As does most of Japan. The first thing that caught my attention when poking around with the phones here is that DTMF is the exception rather than the rule. This comes as quite a shock after reading glowing report after report of how the Japanese phone system is so superior. The bulk of the NTT switching network is crossbar that has had no DTMF capability added. Most PBXes, including the one at the hotel where I am staying, wouldn't recognize a DTMF tone if it bit it on the foot. The usual instrument for customers is a push button "cute" phone of domestic manufacture that pulses at 20 pps. The casual observer would be led to believe that touch tone is common in Japan, when in reality it is not. And those phones! The instuments are atrocious. They sound bad, have a half-life of about six months and are worse than your typical Time-Life special. In fact, the only DTMF other than on coin phones (which are in many ways superior to those in the US) I have seen so far is in the office where I am working. It is an American operation and those in charge found the local instrument offerings so bad that they (at great expense) brought "real" telephones over from the US. Amusingly, among the equipment was a Panasonic KX-T616. The phones the Japanese design and build for export are vastly superior to what they foist upon the home folk. While DTMF may be nearly universal in the US, it will be along time before the rest of the world can say the same.