Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!texbell!vector!telecom-gateway
From: vicorp!charlie@uunet.uu.net (Charlie Goldensher)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Number Editing on Telephones
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Date: 25 Sep 89 16:23:59 GMT
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X-TELECOM-Digest: volume 9, issue 408, message 2 of 9

In article  you write:
>It has to be the most frustrating thing I can think of to wait five
>minutes for a dial tone only to accidentally dial a wrong digit and
>have to hang up and (after waiting for new dial tone!) start over. The
>next most frustrating thing would be to finally get a dial tone, place
>the call and be told by the other end, 'due to heavy call volume, we
>are unable to complete your call at this time....please try again
>later.'

This brings up a question that I've had for some time.  Is there a
telephone set on the market with editing capability?  What I'd like
most is a backspace key.  Especially, now, when a telephone number can
contain ten or more digits, it is extremely frustrating to hit an
incorrect final digit.  The case sighted above would be considerably
more frustrating.

It seems to me that the technology should be relatively simple.  To
use the facility, the numbers would have to be buffered, and sent when
some sort of carriage-return or enter key is hit.  So there could be a
switch for buffered or unbuffered input.  And, a display of some sort
(LED?), that displayed the digits in the buffer, would be nice.

Does anything like that exist?  And if so, how much does it cost?
(Oh...I have only pulse-dialing where I live.  I'd want that feature
on the phone as well.)

-- Charlie Goldensher		charlie@vicorp.uu.NET

[Moderator's Note: Aren't cellular phones sort of like this? You punch
in the entire number, then 'send' it. I assume at any point in the input
that you discovered a mistake you could cancel it and start over, not
actually hitting the 'send' button until you were ready to release it.  PT]