Previous home telephone,mobile phone and internet days. How did you communicate with your friends and relatives etc?

[Baldy]

I can remember queuing up to book a 20minute call to the UK from Belize with Cable and Wireless. In about 1978.
In Kenya in 1981 we discovered that we could retune the satcom to an oil company's satellite and call home. In thought days the satcom fill a Land rover with a trailer for the dish. Of course this was some what illegal, so we had to wait until we were on a late stage.

 

[MntnMan62]

When I was an early teen my parents sent me to sleep away camp in the Northern Adirondacks. This was the mid 70’s. Cell phones were not a thing yet. Communication with friends and family was via writing letters. If we really needed to speak to our parents, there was one phone located in the dining building. I don’t recall there ever being a need. We reveled in the isolation far from civilization. And the phone was one of those rotary jobs. In addition, it was a party line so sometimes when you were speaking with someone, another person would get on the line before realizing it was in use. At home we had several rotary phones around the house. No party line though.

 

[Dave7]

When I were nowt burra lad no one I knew had a phone. It was common to put the 4d in and phone another box where someone was waiting.
I recall missing a train home. I phoned the box near our home, a lad answered. I asked him to knock on number 103 and tell my mum. He left the phone hanging, did as I asked....then came back to tell me all was ok.
I was 18 before we got a phone.

 

[Paulus]

My parents didn't get a 'phone until 1974 when I started work. Before then it was either the local telephone box, 400 yards away, or, it was by letter, telegram, or you went round to the persons house and knocked on the door.

 

[gbb]

Early / mid 1970s, itd be a landline, the house I used to lodge at was phone number East Stoke 431 (or maybe 531). Phone boxes were commonly used. More locally, you'd just go knock on the door of your friends house, he may be in, he may be out. I think meets usually just 'happened'...you came across someone you knew and just made use of the meet, others may join if they were around....it was probably very makeshift.

 

[Saluki]

I have had a landline since I was around 30. I would just pop to a frien’s home and knock on to se if they were there. Telephones were expensive things. Didn’t have a mobile until 1998, that was a works one so didn’t use it much. W3 all seemed 5o stay in touch though.

 

[Gunk]

I remember my parents back the 1970’s had a party line with a neighbour, if we picked the phone up we could hear their conversations.

I’m still a bit old school, can’t quite give up the land line.

 

[Smokin Joe]

I didn't have a landline till I got married in '82. Very few of my friends at school had one either, yet I was one of the early adopters of mobile phones, getting my first in 1992. It wasn't till 1999 when "Pay as you go" was introduced that ownership exploded, parents getting them for their offspring safe in the knowledge they weren't gouing to be landed with massive bills.

One of the things you don't get anymore are friends and relatives calling round unannounced, sometimes a pleasant surprise and others a bloody pain. Now every meeting is arranged beforehand by phone or text.

 

[Electric_Andy]

We'd organize things more in advance so that telephoning wasn't as necessary. At Uni it was 3 rings from a public phone and then my parents would phone back. I don't remember a time before anyone had a landline

 

[ebikeerwidnes]

Meet ups were arranged in advance

So you would agree to meet up outside WHSmith's at 2 ish on Saturday

and you would all try to get there on time

everyone would arrive - and by 10 minutes later we would wander off
If you were running late then you would wander round in the hope of finding people - maybe the people you had arranged to meet - maybe someone else

AT least it did encourage time keeping!!!

 

[Gunk]

yet I was one of the early adopters of mobile phones, getting my first in 1992

I got my first mobile in 1988. An NEC carphone, £25 a month and 25p a minute.

 

[ebikeerwidnes]

I got my first mobile in 1988. An NEC carphone, £25 a month and 25p a minute.

and weighed about 25 lbs???

and that was without the battery!!!!

 

[Gunk]

and weighed about 25 lbs???

and that was without the battery!!!!

No battery, this was fully wired in, all the gubbins was in the boot, then in 1994 I finally had a Motorola flip phone with a cradle in the car, that was really was the future!

 

[Teamfixed]

What? No flams?
Let's not drag it out?😂🤣😂

 

[Archie_tect]

Before Mrs A_T and I got got married, in our early days during her university holidays, when she went home to Cumbria and I was working in St Andrews, we'd write to each other most days. We'd arrange by letter to ring each other up using the red phone boxes- hers at the end of her lane across the main road and mine on the road behind the estate I lived on...

One time I needed to speak to her about something that wasn't a scheduled call... a late evening on a very wet night in winter so I rang her phone box in the hope someone would answer. After a long time ringing out, a very drunk man picked up the phone and I had to persuade him to help:

"You see over the road there's a lane?'
'Er, yes."
'Ypu see the white house halfway down ion the right?
""Er, yes."
" Please could you go and knock on the door and ask, whoever answers, if Judith could ring Chris back straightaway- I'll wait- she knows the number."
"Er, OK", and put the phone down.

About five minutes later she rang to tell me that a very drunk and clearly out of his brain person had knocked on their front door, which no-one ever uses, to ask her mum, who I'd not met at this time, that Judith had to ring Chris... and then staggered off into the rain without another word.


Fast forward 30 years to me out on my bike in the wilds of Northumberland at early o'clock on a Saturday morning when my mobile rings. It never rings, so I knew it had to be urgent and stopped to answer.

It was my son ringing from a taxi going to the train station in Birmingham where he was due to catch a train to Manchester... his debit card had been rejected by the taxi cab as he didn't have enough money in his account as his part-time job wages hadn't cleared.- could I transfer some... I'm his dad and he didn't make a habit of it, So, in the middle of nowhere I did a bank transfer from my account to his over the phone and he paid the taxi driver and caught his train.