| Home
telephones were once such simple things, rented from the General
Post Office and serving only to allow a person to dial the
number of another telephone in order to have a conversation
with someone else.
But like plenty else in life, digital technology
has changed all that. Today’s domestic telephones are
capable of so much more than those of yore, from acting as
computerised answering services to offering business-style
switchboard facilities, able to route calls to individual
handsets around the home.
So, if you’re still drawing finger-circles
on a rotary-dial telephone that’s permanently plumbed
in to BT box mounted on the skirting board, read on to find
out how the world of home telephones has evolved.
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Break free
Remarkably it’s still possible to pay to rent a telephone
from BT. Even more remarkably, more than two million of BT’s
16.5m telephone subscribers do just that.
That’s an awful lot of people shelling
out rental payments indefinitely for something that could
be replaced for a one-off pittance.
If you take nothing else away from this piece
do yourself a favour and return any BT-rented phones, as a
basic corded replacement will cost around a fiver.
However, we’re concerned here with cordless
telephones. Not the ones of old, with easily-buckled three-feet-long
telescopic aerials, crackly reception and spitting-distance
working range from the base station, but digital-enhanced
cordless telephones, or DECT.
Clear and secure
That acronym may conjure nightmare visions of needless and
unfathomable complication when making telephone calls but
actually, placing and receiving calls via a DECT handset is
really no knottier than with a traditional phone.
Nor is anything special required to make use
of DECT: a standard telephone socket (and a nearby mains-power
outlet) suffices.
DECT technology offers numerous advantages.
Call quality for example – at least at the handset-holder’s
end – is clear and consistent, with none of the static
hiss associated with older analogue cordless phones.
Moreover, the DECT-using caller can safely
wander several tens of metres from the handset cradle (called
a base station) without fear of losing the signal –
easily enough range to reach all corners of the typical home.
If need be, coverage can be broadened to many
hundreds of metres by purchasing additional base stations,
as DECT systems can manage multiple base stations, not to
mention multiple handsets.
Then there’s security. Nattering on
DECT handsets can be done safe in the knowledge that neighbours
cannot accidentally or otherwise tune in to conversations,
which is a risk with RF cordless phones.
Moreover, individual handsets need to be ‘registered’
with the base station – a quick process involving the
use of person identification numbers (or PINs) – eliminating
the chance of unauthorised neighbours with similar set-ups
making calls at your expense.
DECT cheers
So far, so dull and worthy.
But the most attractive advantage of DECT
technology is its ability to transform the way people view
and use telephones in the home (or small business, for that
matter). From just one telephone socket, a single DECT base
station can manage multiple handsets.
An advanced package, like Panasonic’s
£130 KX-TG7124ES with four handsets, will allow walkie-talkie-style
chats to be had between two (or more) handsets ‘registered’
with the base station, with no call charges incurred.
Elsewhere in the house, someone could use
the third or fourth handset to make or answer a telephone
call, without interrupting the aforesaid intercom chat.
The number of handsets that can be registered
with a single DECT base station varies, but is typically between
four and six. This makes it possible to start small and add
additional handsets later.
Digital
Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications |
DECT
- A Brief Explanation |
How
to choose a DECT cordless phone |
DECT
wireless telephony | The
future of DECT ? |
