More swimming in a shallow pool
Q. What's the future of the ring, busy signal, and dial tone?
A. They'll continue but their role will diminish. Today, wireless telephones don't use dial tone, busy signals don't exist with voice mail, and some calls connect with no ring heard.
Siemens introduced dial tone to the public switched telephone network in Germany in 1908. It's still useful for landline telephones. You hear dial tone only when switching equipment can take your call. No dial tone, no call. That's different than wireless. Landline connections proceed in real time as we dial, wireless calls proceed after we dial. Calls get set up once you hit "Send", not before. Get it? You don't need a dial tone, in other words, since no connection exists before you dial. Unlike a landline telephone, there is no network yet to monitor. Mark van der Hoek (internal link) comments:
"In the early days of cellular phones, the lack of dial tone was confusing to many customers. Two manufacturers, E.F. Johnson and NEC, provided fake dial tone for their cellular phones. As long as the cellphone could lock onto a control channel, the phone produced dial tone in the earpiece. If the phone couldn't find the network no dial tone would be generated. Personally, I'd like to see dial tone go the way of the dodo bird, and I think it's happening. Just this weekend I used a Radio Shack cordless phone that allowed the user to dial the entire number, make corrections if needed, and THEN engage the "TALK" button to dial the numbers. No dial tone was heard until the TALK button was pressed. As soon as dial tone was detected, the digits were sent. In my opinon, ALL phones should operate this way."
I disagree. I like more audible feedback from machines than less. I like keys that go click and buttons that go beep. It would be interesting to see what the man/machine interface studies say about this. But what about the busy signal and the ring tone?
Busy signals no longer happen when you call someone with voice mail. You either connect in real time or you leave a message. Around 1996 the New Brunswick Telephone Company or NBTel, upgraded their switches for that small Canadian province. Every customer was then given voice mail as part of their basic telephone service. No more busy signals when you call New Brunswick. If stateside telephone companies weren't already selling voice mail as an add on service, instead of including it as NBTel, then busy signals would decrease even further. Dr. Richard Ling, industrial sociologist (internal link), comments:
"The social impacts of the dial and busy tones are somewhat minimal compared to other telephonic developments. For me, the big changes have been the mobility allowed by the mobile phone, and the ability to get information over long distances, which was first introduced by telegraphy and then further developed by telephony."
"The change from a dial tone to the system used in mobile phones (where you can see the signal strength and network connection) seems to be along the lines of the change from manual to automatic transmissions. That is, the big revolution was already underway and the smaller innovation facilitated it to some degree."
"The same is, to some degree, true of the busy signal. The rise of answering services and forwarding of calls has had some impacts. In terms of answering machines, the caller can at least to some degree initiate the contact and give some type of message. It also partially places the onus on the person being called to respond and perhaps try to call back the original caller. In other words the communication is, at some level, initiated. When one is met with a busy signal then that is basically a dead end."
The dial tone, busy tone, and ring are certainly adjuncts, temporary companions on our telephonic journey. These progress tones mark a network's ability to connect a call, but by themselves they do little, it is the content and now mobility in telephony, as Ling notes, that matters. What we communicate after a connection is made. Still, little is more frustrating than an endless busy signal or a telephone that rings on forever.
We all know the endless busy signal. In very bad cases we'd wonder if our friend took the phone off the hook, was just talking for hours, or was lying incapacitated on the floor. Getting the operator to check the line is embarrassing and expensive but I think we've all done it, especially in an emergency when we had to get a call through.
The endless ring is another matter. No options here, no possible operator intervention. In many cases today, though, you don't hear a ring if you are connected. You simply hear the other party picking up. I don't know what produces a ring at one time, and not at another. Limited rings are also quite common, a telco or business may give you a certain amount of rings and then "busy you out", dropping your call. They want to restrict your call attempts (and thus time) on their networks. The instant connection and limited ring both forecast a decreasing use for the ring. But this is the ring you hear when you call. What about the ring the caller hears?
The telephone is first and foremost an audio device, admittedly of low bandwidth, and of low fidelity. It's keypad and ringer don't produce the best tones. But look at the popularity with mobiles of downloadable ring tones. And when touch tone phones came out there were books on how to play songs on the DTMF keypads. I am a little surprised mobiles aren't fixed up now so they can play different songs without dialing through. Try the song below, It's not Creed, but it will do as an example:
NB: (-) Dashes are held notes (,) Commas are spaces
Ode to Joy
669##96544566-55-
669##96544565-44-
5564569645696545#
669##96544565-44-