On 2008-08-01 01:44:04 +0100, (Andrew
Gabriel) said:

In article 48924243@qaanaaq,
Andy Hall writes:
On 2008-07-31 18:34:55 +0100, Frank Erskine
said:

On Thu, 31 Jul 2008 18:10:26 +0100 (BST), "Dave Liquorice"
wrote:

A BT provided wired phone will work for a considerable time from the
exchange batteries or genset.

Indeed. I still use proper phones with dials :-)

Number please, caller.

Reminds me of a story I heard when I was working for GPT, 15
years back. A telephone exchange engineer was out on a long-term
assignment in India (IIRC) with his family, as often happened
when a large network infrastructure was being installed.

His kids got chatting to some local kids, and were talking
about the new phone technology daddy was installing.

"You'll be able to lookup someone's number, lift the receiver
and dial anwhere in the world."

The Indian kid replied:

"We don't need to do that. We just pick the receiver up and
ask to be connected".

That's a lovely story.

On the theme of GPT, I can remember planning and making a visit to
their site in Coventry. The address was New Century Park. It
sounded impressive and high tech with a name like that. Until one got
there. What they had omitted to mention was *which* century.

I suppose nowadays they have the three sausages on the roof.