We have collected 15 interesting facts about the telecommunications industry in our blog․
1. The telephone is the most profitable invention in U.S. History.
2. It took about a year to connect the first phone line from New York to San Francisco. This line was comprised of 14,000 miles of copper wire and 130,000 telephone poles.
3. The longest phone cable is called FLAG (Fiber-Optic Link Around the Globe). It is 16,800 miles long and connects Japan to the United Kingdom. It can carry 600,000 calls at one time.
4. One million threads of fiber optic cable can fit in a ½” diameter tube.
5. The 911 system was first introduced in the United States in 1968.
6. As a tribute to Alexander Graham Bell, all phones ceased ringing for a full minute in 1922.
7. The Nokia tone for receiving SMS text messages is actually Morse code for SMS.
8. Telephone wires were ranked for use based on how tasty they were to mice. The tastier the wire the less likely it was used.
9. The most common use of mobile phones is checking the time.
10. The first Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) call was made in December 1974. Today VoIP is most commonly used in the online gaming.
11. The FCC (Federal Communications Commission) wants to make Wi-Fi free to all Americans. If this ever happens all calls could be made for free using VoIP.
12. The first text message sent was “Merry Christmas” by Neil Papworth - British software architect, designer and developer.
13. International calls rarely travel via satellite anymore. Instead, most are sent over fiber optics and VoIP.
14. When you make a phone call there are no dedicated lines between you and the person you dial; merely packets of data being moved from place to place.
15. The “cloud” is supported by multitudes of computers located in air-conditioned buildings owned by the service providers.