We can thank Alexander Graham Bell for inventing the telephone back in 1876 but today’s telecommunication technology is unrecognisable from the early days of telephone exchanges and switchboards.
For decades, the traditional telephone network in the UK was visible for us all to see; every street was lined with telegraph poles, and copper cables stretched across towns. Before the advent of mobile phones, every home had a landline telephone.
Only a few decades ago it was considered fairly cutting edge to have a cordless telephone in your home; most UK households still relied on the traditional rotary dial telephones. The traditional Bakelite phones that emerged in the 1930s were of course the height of technology during that decade and through into the 1950s.
Developed in Norway by Elektrisk Bureau A/S, the Bakelite telephone was manufactured from an early form of plastic which was easily moulded and lightweight and thus an ideal material to use, replacing the old sheet metal telephones.
Move on to the present day and the field of telecommunications paints a very different picture. As traditional landline usage in the UK has declined dramatically over the last 20 years an increasing number of households are now turning to digital telephone systems to make their regular phone calls. Welcome to the age of VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol).
So what is VoIP? Also referred to as IP telephony, VoIP systems work by converting your voice into digital data that is sent over the internet. The many advantages of this digital system are how cheap they are to run and primarily how flexible they are: the caller does not have to rely on traditional landlines or cellular networks and communications are optimised allowing the user to make video calls, conference calls, send text messages and share files.
In fact, VoIP systems are rapidly replacing the traditional landlines PSTN systems (Public Switched Telephone Network) which rely on copper wires and are tied to fixed locations. It enables you to make a phone call using your broadband internet connection as opposed to a phone socket.
Like a lot of great inventions, the VoIP technology that exists today took many years to evolve. Its origins go back to 1928 at Bell Telephone Laboratories in the United States where an inventor called Homer Dudley invented a machine called the Voder. Comprising keys and pedals and sound filters, this machine was able to produce human-sounding speech. Dudley patented many other speech related systems in the 1930s such as US Patent 1784825 for speech transmission which can be viewed here.
In 1969 a US Government agency developed a computer network known as ARPANET which allowed computers in different locations to communicate with each other. These early developments were the beginnings of the internet. However, it would take another 2 decades before VoIP technology began to reach its potential.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s games developers were creating gaming software that allowed users to talk over a local network. This effectively was the first VoIP phone software to emerge.
The last 20 years have seen numerous developments in telecommunications. Remember Skype? This platform started in Estonia in 2003 and was revolutionary at the time, allowing people to call for free online. At its peak Skype had over 300 million users.
In more recent years the growth in remote working has seen VoIP became the go to method of communication with its features such as video calls, mobile apps and voicemail. And with the advent of artificial intelligence the appearance of chatbots and voice assistants have only increased its popularity.
The transition to VoIP across the UK is expected to be completed by 31 January 2027, when analogue networks will finally be switched off.
