Produced by British Telecom International for the BT Educational Service, circa 1984. Featuring Tommy Boyd, he demonstrates how calls of the time would typically route between the UK and Australia.
CANTAT-2 was the second Canadian transatlantic telephone cable, in operation from 1974 to 1992. It could carry 1,840 simultaneous telephone calls between Beaver Harbour, Nova Scotia and England. The parties involved were Canadian Overseas Telecommunication Corporation and the British General Post Office. The cable was rerouted to Sable Island as Sitifofog 2000 for a period, and was eventually decommissioned.
I'd have thought British Telecom in 1984 would have shown one of their latest TXEs for "Mrs Frobishire's" local exchange, rather than ancient Strowger switches.
@@gooner49life40 I recall getting away with loads. I had a Commer (yuk) and would park outside the pub on the double yellows for a couple hours, then everyone piled in the back and I took them back to the exchange and they'd climb on the cable racks and sleep it off.
I never knew it was a complex pathway, yet the calls go through so fast, I remember dialing UK and the States from Australia in the 80's. It always took a few seconds before the remote phone rang, and I would hear this little musical tune, maybe it was to let you know you were dialing international. These days its so much cheaper to call overseas'
It still takes some time today, but for most of the world that tune is gone unless you are calling a place that still has an analog long distance network. That "tune" was the MultiFrequency tones (different than the ones from your tone dial) that were used to signal the number you were calling (and many times also the number you were calling from).
Haha! That house in Perth is totally NOT an Australian house. They've just used an English bungalow as a stand in. I get it, the budget probably didn't allow for such an expensive flight or a local film crew.
Yep - that was a Western Electric 1500D - whereas us Australians used the STC/Telecom 802's at this time. We were another 3-4 years away from being upgraded to digital exchanges.
Those poor kids got ripped-off. They were driven around the UK, only to end up on a remote beach in Southwest England. They didn't get to travel across the Atlantic, tour North America, then sail the Pacific all the way to Australia and then travel cross country all the way to Perth, where Mrs. Frobisher was calling. They should have sued. I'm also a bit suspicious the house Mrs. Frobisher reached was not in Perth, or even Australia. She should have called the operator and told him or her she reached a wrong number. ;)
repeater amplifier at 3:27 ? looks like it has unity gain ( gain of 1) as peak to peak sinewave signal level going IN is EXACTLY the same level coming OUT ! ( so "isn't doing anything !) You'd have thought they would have shown the signal on the left going down in amplitude in a exponential decaying fashion - and then leaving the amplifier at a greater level .... This is about as good as the standard of driving ! (parking on double yellow lines at 0:23... and untidy at that ! - not parallel to the line of the Road - rear end of vehicle sticking out into road )
Almost all intercontinental data goes via fibre now . See this for a good description of the UK's part in it ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-K_nnUbX7uuQ.html
They are carried by Fibre Optics over the Atlantic. It is quite possible that the call could travel through a VoIP network meaning it traverses the Atlantic as data just like a RU-vid video or this comment.
And in the 1980s it cost circa AU$5 a minute to call Aust to UK... Probably that's like $15 per minute in 2024 money... But now everyone just uses watsapp to call anywhere (for free)...
It didn’t look like a Telstra exchange to me, too tidy and your map looked like Perth had slipped a little down towards Margret River, but it’s good enough for a kids show…😅
The number of fixed line phones is dropping quickly. The use of mobiles is increasing - we are in the billions now... All phones are using TCP/IP to make/receive calls.
How things have changed over the years but the is more telephone poles being erected by openreach and a lot of the new telecommunications company’s to Supply fibre Connections to customers because it is the cheapest way of doing it Making some places which were under ground feed now look like something from the past so not all is so great about new technology
