Davesnothere
join:2009-06-15
2 edits | reply to jfmezei
SMS to Land Line Phone
said by jfmezei  :Bell should have long ago added "SMS" capabilities to its network so you could send an SMS to a landline phone, especially if the person is using it on a voice call to another person. .
I have not personally witnessed this, but a friend told me of a model of phone which Bell Canada used to sell / rent (and she had one), which she claims could receive emails (and I expect also send them) using its internal several line LCD text screen.
It may have been a Nortel built phone.
Exactly how this was set up I do not know, and it was 5 or 10 years ago that we had this conversation.
I think that she may have had dialup Sympatico service and it may have shared the assigned email address.
Has anyone heard of this scenario ? |
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jfmezei
Premium
join:2007-01-03
Beaconsfield, QC
 ·ELECTRONICBOX
| Re: SMS to ????
>I have not personally witnessed this, but a friend told me of a model of
>phone which Bell Canada used to sell / rent (and she had one), which
>she claims could receive emails (and I expect also send them) using its >internal several line LCD text screen.
Yep, I actually used one. It was a combo terminal/telephone . Name escapes me at the moment. 1200 baud dialup modem inside. You could use it for voice and data at same time if you have 2 phone lines on it.
It was a black and white CRT. I think it had VT100 emulation. They had deployed a few of those at airports to allow Envoy 100 customers to access their email from airports. That would have been around mid 1980s.
It was just ahead of Bell's NAPLS "Alex" trials which failed royally because of exhorbitant pricing.
»www.answers.com/topic/alex-videotex-service
But the Envoy 100 terminal/phone had styling for office environments. |
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freejazz_RdJ
join:2009-03-10
1 edit | Dave is talking about the Cybiolink device, which is much more modern than the Alextel. It was an out-of-band device that used frequencies outside the voice band to send/receive interactive services such as email, news and weather. In essence, a uber-vista 350 with keyboard and large multi-lien screen.
As for SMS to landline, it exists: your wireless provider will use a text to speech engine to read the message to the landline recipient AND allow the recipient to record a reply.
Trying to market a landline phone device that does SMS is like trying to sell the videophone: why buy an expensive single-purpose device (SMS or Video phone) when existing, more versatile devices can do the same thing with better value (cell phone or SMS PC app / Every IM program like Skype, MSN, AIM, iChat). |
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MaynardKrebs
Premium
join:2009-06-17
| reply to Davesnothere
Re: SMS to Land Line Phone
said by Davesnothere :I have not personally witnessed this, but a friend told me of a model of phone which Bell Canada used to sell / rent (and she had one), which she claims could receive emails (and I expect also send them) using its internal several line LCD text screen. It may have been a Nortel built phone. I used a Nortel phone once which had a small screen on (maybe 40 chars x 6 lines) and VT100/200 emulation. It also had a small keyboard. I had it connected to my VAX and could access al the operating system's features, including local and wide-area e-mail. Bell/Nortel came and took some promotional photos with it connected to my system, which they then used in some promo literature. This was back in 1984 (for real). |
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CR123
join:2006-11-04
Vancouver, BC
| reply to jfmezei
Re: Telus-Bell Merge Rumor - Say Whaaaaaaat!?!?
said by jfmezei :As I recall, Telus is really the alberta government (through AGT) buying BC Tel, so I would assume GTE's holding in the new combined Telus would have been very reduced. Does anyone know if GTE sold all of its stake when Telus was formed, or did it retain some ownership for a few years before full divestiture ? Close. AGT was privatized, became TELUS, and TELUS and BC Tel merged (a merger of equals, pretty much). GTE's holding in BC Tel was reduced gradually, and they effectively divested their stake in around 2003-4 I think?
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- The content of this post is my opinion, and does not reflect the opinions of my employer. - |
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