At 12 May 2008 08:40:22 -0500 Ron wrote:

> Sound quality was often an issue in the past with analog phones.


I find quite the opposite- certainly backgrond noise and static could be an
issue depending on signal level, but the actual fidelity (quality) was much
higher with uncompressed analog FM than with the cram-even-more-calls-on-a-
single-radio-channel digital codecs used today in GSM or CDMA.

I remember selling a pair of analog bag phones to a local radio station in
the late 80s. They used them for live remotes with a gizmo that bypassed
the handsets and let them plug their mixers right into the phone hardware.
The 8KHz bandwidth was more than sufficient for good FM quality voice back
to the studio as long as the call went cellphone-to-cellphone (that's why
they bought two) and didn't touch a POTS line. (The music was actually
spun by a DJ back at the station- the on-air personality at the live remote
site just pretended to mess with discs and tapes for effect.) Even at the
$0.25-0.50/minute cellular ran in the late 80's, it was _far_ cheaper for
the station than leasing a broadcast-quality hardline for a remote
broadcast that would only run a few hours.