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Texting (SMS) from a British payphone Trivia

AnalogueAnarchy

Casual Member
What is the under pinning architecture of BT payphone networks ? I noticed that all BT payphones since the late 90s / early 2000s have the ability to send SMS texts and some even email. Does this mean they have a dedicated end to end ISDN line or a special SMS-only modem then gets packetized for mobile distribution at the MDF ? I always assumed a traditional POTs voice-only line didn't facilitate a digital text message regardless of how small in size and so must therefore be ISDN ?
 
What is the under pinning architecture of BT payphone networks ? I noticed that all BT payphones since the late 90s / early 2000s have the ability to send SMS texts and some even email. Does this mean they have a dedicated end to end ISDN line or a special SMS-only modem then gets packetized for mobile distribution at the MDF ? I always assumed a traditional POTs voice-only line didn't facilitate a digital text message regardless of how small in size and so must therefore be ISDN ?
I've wondered this before too, but ended on the idea that they must have some sort of dialup server system set up, but never really researched it any further than me own speculation
 
I always assumed a traditional POTs voice-only line didn't facilitate a digital text message regardless of how small in size and so must therefore be ISDN ?
Compatible phones can send and receive SMS on a caller ID-enabled PSTN line. My BT Paragon seems to dial 1470, pause, then send a second dial string to send texts. Incoming text messages cause a single gong-strike in the bellset.

I presume the same system is/was used for payphones. Sadly, the service is no longer available at my local full-service payphone.
 
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We used to have a Panasonic DECT phone which supported SMS on a BT line. You had to send a message to the system to 'activate' it, then it worked quite well. I assume the SMS compatible payphones work the same way.

Back in the 2000s there were some payphones with "smartphone-sized" screens and QWERTY keyboards, which I think did email or WWW or both. I never bothered to try and use one. No idea how they worked but unless the phone box also had a WiFi hotspot or similar I'd assume it would be cheapest to just use a dialup connection.
 
We used to have a Panasonic DECT phone which supported SMS on a BT line. You had to send a message to the system to 'activate' it, then it worked quite well. I assume the SMS compatible payphones work the same way.

Back in the 2000s there were some payphones with "smartphone-sized" screens and QWERTY keyboards, which I think did email or WWW or both. I never bothered to try and use one. No idea how they worked but unless the phone box also had a WiFi hotspot or similar I'd assume it would be cheapest to just use a dialup connection.

I think a lot of those payphones that did have the querty keyboards were usually also WiFi hotspots.

I do wonder if BT ever managed to make any money back on trying to innovate with SMS and internet access on their payphone devices. I can remember back in the mid and late 90s some payphones I was responsible for were a licence to print money, but income dropped off a cliff in the early 00s and I had a BT payphones regional manager asking to be released from a contract I inherited which guaranteed the site income irrespective of if the payphone was being used or not.
 
those payphones could also send emails (I never saw any that were SMS only, it was always both), so it wasn't as simple as using the same system that was provided for home phones.

as BT still maintained a dialup internet platform at the time it would have been a no brainer to use that to support this service.

it wouldn't have been anything as complicated as using ISDN since the payphones didn't use that. (though the "broadband" payphones did use ADSL of course)
 
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