I remember in the early nineties I found in my grandmother’s antique store one of those old black candlestick phones that you would jiggle to ring the operator. It didn’t have a rotary dial.
I plugged it in and got dial tone. I jiggled the hook and an operator answered the phone and asked me something. I don’t remember if I hung up or talked with them.
When mobile phones came out they improved the system significantly but it was still very much old tech.
Getting the entire world to switch to something better would be quite the undertaking.
Even just switching mobile voice standards is painful, as seen in Australia recently. In theory, you just need VoLTE support to use calling over 4G, but it turns out there is a bunch of other compatibility issues like emergency calling, device software and firmware settings, and carrier side problems that complicate matters.
Because the phone system is old
It’s also backwards compatible to an extreme:
I remember in the early nineties I found in my grandmother’s antique store one of those old black candlestick phones that you would jiggle to ring the operator. It didn’t have a rotary dial.
I plugged it in and got dial tone. I jiggled the hook and an operator answered the phone and asked me something. I don’t remember if I hung up or talked with them.
When mobile phones came out they improved the system significantly but it was still very much old tech.
Getting the entire world to switch to something better would be quite the undertaking.
Even just switching mobile voice standards is painful, as seen in Australia recently. In theory, you just need VoLTE support to use calling over 4G, but it turns out there is a bunch of other compatibility issues like emergency calling, device software and firmware settings, and carrier side problems that complicate matters.