Tag: internet

November 9th – Whilst at the war memorial, I spotted a bit of an anachronism outside the Post Office in Darlaston – this really reminded me of the heady days of the early internet revolution.

This red K6 phonebox has a banner sticker at the top pointing out you could once email and text from the phone there. I believe that was a late 90s/early 2000s thing and required a special phone to be installed in the phone booth with a qwerty keyboard – but I could be wrong. 

However it worked, I doubt theres a use for such things today with the rise of the smartphone – and I don’t know about you, but the very sight of someone using a phonebox these days looks a bit… shifty. 

How fast times have changed from ‘Press button A’!

June 29th – At Chasewater, I stopped to study something I’d not taken much notice of before – a microwave transceiver antenna between the boating lake and Innovation Centre. Painted brown to blend in, It’s pointing towards Pye Green, but could be anywhere in-between, too, like a telephone exchange or similar. On top is a standard ‘drum’ microwave antenna, with a transceiver amplifier halfway up. The nameplate on that suggests an 8MB link, and is almost certainly a broadband connection for the conference facilities, as I suspect the Innovation Centre was originally too far off the beaten track for a decent phone connection. Together with mobile phone network data backhaul, this is the only widespread use of such links still in use.