UK Vintage Radio Repair and Restoration Powered By Google Custom Search Vintage Radio and TV Service Data

Go Back   UK Vintage Radio Repair and Restoration Discussion Forum > Specific Vintage Equipment > Vintage Telephony and Telecomms

Notices

Vintage Telephony and Telecomms Vintage Telephones, Telephony and Telecomms Equipment

Closed Thread
 
Thread Tools
Old 20th Jul 2020, 12:26 am   #21
Graham G3ZVT
Dekatron
 
Graham G3ZVT's Avatar
 
Join Date: May 2010
Location: Greater Manchester, UK.
Posts: 18,675
Default Re: Phonecard payphones

Quote:
Originally Posted by qazxsw123 View Post
Before mobile phones they were used in prisons,
So true

From what I read, the official replacement for card-phones in prison is a system where each prisoner has a unique PIN which gives him access to a list of pre-authorised numbers.
__________________
--
Graham.
G3ZVT
Graham G3ZVT is offline  
Old 21st Jul 2020, 1:38 am   #22
hamid_1
Heptode
 
Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: High Wycombe, Bucks. UK.
Posts: 811
Default Re: Phonecard payphones

There's an article about BT Prison Phonecards here:
http://www.telephonecardcollector.co...phonecards.htm

They were modified so that ordinary public phone cards could not be smuggled in and used in prison payphones. I'm not sure what was different about them.

Another oddity: When BT first introduced phonecards in the 1980s, they were optical. A strip containing a hologram was scanned by a laser in the payphone, which burnt away the strip as the credit was used. Thus cards could not be re-credited; it was pretty much fraud-proof. But in 1995, BT started trialling smartcard phonecards (chip-based) first in Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight. The trial was successful and the new chip cards and payphones (made by Schlumberger) were rolled out nationwide, eventually replacing the Landis & Gyr optical cardphones. Yet even before 1995, smart cards used for viewing satellite TV had already been 'hacked'. Why did BT want to switch to a less secure system? I notice the prison payphones never made the switch. No smart chip phonecards appear to have been issued to HM prisons.

Another thing I noticed was that the new chip phonecards had expiry dates printed on them, whereas the optical ones did not.

In any case, the chip phonecards were rather short-lived due to arrival of cheap pay-as-you-go mobile phones at the beginning of this century.
hamid_1 is offline  
Closed Thread

Thread Tools



All times are GMT +1. The time now is 2:45 pm.


All information and advice on this forum is subject to the WARNING AND DISCLAIMER located at https://www.vintage-radio.net/rules.html.
Failure to heed this warning may result in death or serious injury to yourself and/or others.


Powered by vBulletin®
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.
Copyright ©2002 - 2023, Paul Stenning.