Portable phone

Portable phone

A portable phone has the benefit of not being tied to a certain place, which provides more freedom to the person using it. Also, you can have more than one portable phone connected to the same number. Today’s portable phones in Sweden uses the standard DECT, which is also commonly used on the international market.

After long use of the classic wire phones, new and easier to use alternatives started to appear on the market in the 1980s. These often consisted of a wireless unit, and a base station where the phone was placed when it wasn’t used. The phone was also charged in the base station.

The reach of portable phones vary, but inside where the signal is partially interrupted by walls, the reach is roughly 50 meters. The reach outside can be up to 300 meters for a good wireless phone. It’s not uncommon to have more than one at home to place in different rooms.

  • Portable phones became popular in the 80s.
  • Portable phones use the DECT technique to call.
  • A development of DECT is the GAP technique.
  • DECT stands for Digital Enhanced Cordless.
  • The portable phones came to Sweden from east Asia.
  • DECT doesn’t exist in all countries, Japan has their own system for example.
  • Maximal transfer speed of data is 384 kbit/s per frequency channel.

The technique behind portable phones

DECT, Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications, is a standard for wireless phones and is used in many countries. When the first analogue, wireless phones showed up they had issues with interrupted sound and risks of interception. This triggered further development of wireless phones into becoming more digital.

In the late 80s two different technologies of wireless phones were developed – one Swedish and one British. The standardization organ ETSI decided to take the best of both techniques and develop and common standard that everyone could use, which in turn became DECT.

The DECT was used by approximately 74% of the world’s portable phones in 2011. And roughly 110 countries were introduced to it in the 80s and 90s. In the US it was presented in 2005, and has steadily grown since. Apart from the famous standard GSM, DECT is the most popular standard ever to be developed.

Portable phones today

Portable home phones today have different beneficial and helpful functions. Number presentation which shows what number is calling, lit up display with information and button presets are just a few. In many phones it’a also possible to save numbers in a phone book and transfer calls.

With portable home phones it’s possible to call internally between phones if you have more than one. It does however require that they’re all connected to the same base station. It’s therefore an easy way to get a hold of someone a little further away where another phone is placed.

How many phones you need of course depends on your needs, but many base stations can have up to 4 phones connected to it. Some are charged at the base station, and some use normal batteries, and call time can be up to 30 hours, meaning that the batteries last for long calls.