----- Original Message ----- From: "David Morris" <dwm@xxxxxxxxx> Cc: <ietf@xxxxxxxx> Sent: Wednesday, January 02, 2013 10:16 PM > > On Wed, 2 Jan 2013, ned+ietf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote: > > > At one point there was something that said one phone in each home had to be > > directly wired without a plug. I don't know if this was a regulation, a phone > > company rule, or just a suggestion, but it also fell by the wayside after > > Carterphone. > > May have varied by baby bell, but in Michigan, you could have as many > jacks as you wished, but you had to lease them all from the telco. There > may have been a rule about having at least one hard wired phone, I don't > recall. In those days, the telco owned and was responsible for all inside > wiring. > > > I certainly saw acoustic coupled equipment in use long after Carterphone, but > > in my experience it was because of general intertia/unwillingness to do the > > necessary engineering, not because of the lack of connectors. > > Probably more to do with portability of accoustic couplers and the lack of > provisioning in motels, etc. for jacks. What a parochial discussion this has become! Going back to the ITU-T (remember them:-), they, or their predecessors, defined the interfaces, such as R, S, T, U, and it was then up to individual governments to proscribe how far the national monopoly extended. The USA has a reputation for being liberal whereas where I was, the monopoly PTT owned the wiring in my house, in my office and everywhere else which, de facto, gave them a monopoly over the CPE. One of the achievements of the EU (or its predecessors), perhaps its only noteworthy achievement, was to pressurise member states to limit the national monopoly, which in turn made the kind of telecommunications we have now possible (outside America). I suspect that large parts of the world have yet to get there. Tom Petch