The Telephone: Past, Present, and Future

If you happen to be a fan of daytime or late-night talk shows you’ve probably seen skits where they’ve asked people from different age ranges including millennials or the Gen Z population about telephones. Since most people in these age groups have been walking with and talking into a smartphone since being a toddler, knowing about other telephone equipment before the smartphone is not normally the case. Rotary Phones. Landlines. Conference Phones. All foreign words to some. On this hilarious episode of The Ellen Show, a 17 year old girl was challenged to use a map, phonebook, and rotary telephone. The end results even surprised Ellen!

But yes, there were other types of telephones before smartphones. In fact, the telephone was invented in 1876 by Alexander Graham Bell. Check out more history and evolution about the past, present, and future of the telephone in the infographic timeline below.

Telephone Equipment and Features Past Present Future

In 2023, how can today’s telephone equipment and telephone features positively affect your day-to-day operations for your business? From the business phone system you select, to the features you choose, designing the perfect solution your small to medium business requires is what BizVox is here to do for you.

Let’s start with telephone equipment. As highlighted in our Business Solutions, Hosted VoIP PBX, VoIP hardware solutions, PBX and key system solutions are a few different options available for your business. From two phone lines on up, using the right telephone equipment can immediately increase the efficiency of your in-house or remote employees. For example, a small business PBX phone system equipped with Analog, Digital, or SIP trunks can come in numerous denominations of telephones and offer the ability to have 20+ calls and even more extensions operating at the same time. If a modern Hosted VoIP phone system is more attractive for your business, the possibilities are endless when it comes to building the best configuration. Working from your desk, the airport, or your favorite local coffee shop, Cloud Based VoIP is easy and accessible wherever you might be.

Now let’s move on to telephone features. Remember the busy signal? Well depending on your age, you might just remember that awful sound but more importantly remember the first time you heard the magical call waiting beep. What an amazing treat! The ability to connect to a second caller while keeping the original person you were on the line with on hold. Calling features have evolved and continue to do so. Some of the most notable original calling features include call waiting, caller ID, 3-Way calling, and voicemail.

As business telephone equipment gets better, so do the calling features available. In this day and time some of the most intriguing and used features include Find me/Follow me, call parking, voicemail to email, conferencing, automated attendants, and remote extensions. Just to name a few as this list goes on. That’s why consulting a professional from BizVox to help you customize a solution for your business telephone equipment and features can eliminate the need to research all these details on your own.

What does the future hold? One of the all-time favorite futuristic cartoons, The Jetsons was ahead of its time when they had us enjoying videophone calls between George and his boss Mr. Spacely back in 1962. We can all agree that the industry is not going to let up anytime soon. Here at BizVox we’re excited to see how technology continues to evolve the business solutions that will work best for your business. Find out more about Telephone Equipment by completing our Request A Quote form or contacting us at sales@bizvox.net or 843-628-0860. BizVox, Connecting the Charleston area with confidence.

*Infographic Resources include: Wikipedia History of the Telephone. CBS News. The evolution of the telephone. Computer Museum of America. Evolution of the telephone. Wikipedia The Jetsons.

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