‘Superphone’ making dial phone museum piece

Press, 2 December 1987, Page 51

‘Superphone’ making dial phone museum piece

By

CATHERINE ARNST

NZPA-Reuter Boston

The plain old telephone is becoming a thing of the past in homes as well as offices, as consumers rush to buy “superphones” that can remember numbers, take messages and even block unwanted calls. Enhanced phones are becoming one of the most common computerised devices in homes in the United States.

The old fashioned dial phone is almost a museum piece. Virtually all offices and about twothirds of all homes in the United States have touchtone telephones. The Yankee Group consulting firm estimates that 70 per cent of all phones bought in the first six months of this year carried at least one extra feature.

“Because the electronic components are so cheap, . you can buy a feature phone for almost the same price as an oldfashioned phone,” said Casey Dworkin, research director of the consulting firm. Personal Technology Research. "Actually, it's getting pretty hard to find a basic black phone anymore." The most commonly bought feature is the ability to automatically, redial Vhe last numbejTcalled,

said a Yankee Group consultant, Christopher Jackson.

Many phones memorise numbers, particularly emergency numbers that can be dialled by just pushing one button. Mr Dworkin said consumers also want phones with two-line capability, display screens, speaker phones and automatic answering machines. In Japan, phones with built-in FAX machines are becoming popular for sending and receiving documents, but demand for such devices in the home is virtually non existent in the rest of the world. For consumers who think even pushing a button is too much trouble, the telephone industry is working hard to develop affordable voicerecognition telephones that follow verbal directions.

Voice-activated phones are programmed by their user to automatically dial a number in response to a spoken word. Such devices are still expensive novelty items and most current models are impractical for a family because they can be programmed to recognise only one voice.

But Southwestern. Bell has introduced a JTJS4SO

($679) voice-activated phone which it said can dial in response to anyone's voice.

The space-age-looking Freedom Phone has no key pad for hand dialling. To reach numbers not stored in its memory, the phone recognises spoken numbers. Mr Jackson said the enhancements have apparently inspired consumers to own more phones. In 1980 there were an average of 1.2 phones in every American household. Today there are more than two.

Analysts estimate that American consumers will buy about 4.8 million enhanced phones this year at an average cost of SUSSI each ($77), and the market will grow to about eight million a year by 1990.

The proliferation of superphones was sparked by the deregulation of the United States telephone system in 1984, which ended American Telephone and Telegraph Company’s practice of leasing most consumer telephone equipment. Deregulation also stepped up competition and many more types, of phone have become available cheaply. AT&T is the largest ven-

dor of home telephones, followed by GTE, Tandys Radio Shack and Panasonic. Other Japanese companies are also rushing into the market, among them Matsushita and Sony. Most industry members no longer expect a merger of the computer and telephone in the near future, an idea that was all the rage three or four years ago. Although some manufacturers offer extremely expensive terminals with built-in telephones, analysts said it would be decades before consumers would be interested in such a device. Only about one-third of all personal computers now in the home even have a modem for communications.

However, home telephones can perform computer-like functions if they are linked to enhanced telephone networks, and all of the regional phone companies in the United States are rapidly improving their systems to provide a host of new features to home callers.

One such service, being test marketed in several states, allows subscribers automatically to return the last call received, to screen calls or to. block unwanted calls.