re how universal are phones these days in article wd apr sam cs tu berlin de wd cs tu berlin de wolfgang diestelkamp writes in article rg hinnsr darkstar ucsc edu hugo cats ucsc edu hugo calendar writes i m wondering if i can tote my american touch tone phone around with me to sweden and germany it s dc powered and i can buy a special adapter for that in europe the question is if the general electronics work the same i can buy a different wall plug and refit it i m sure i d have to but would that do the trick two things to watch for in germany and i think the same holds for sweden only some of the connections can handle tone dialing so make sure the phone can be set to pulse dialing in sweden the is the first digit and all other digits are pushed down by one position this makes dialing and in the process converting numbers an interesting task otherwise it is technically no problem to connect a foreign phone to either the german or swedish phone system otoh neither you nor i would ever try that as it is of course illegal as the phone uses dtmf dialing which by some magic all telecom operators seems to have agreed on this is a complete non issue i don t think there are any switches in sweden that can t handle dtmf dialing most switches are now digital and thoses that aren t have been retrofitted with magic fingers that converts from dtmf to pulse dialing thomas real life thomas t rnblom email thomas tornblom nexus comm se snail mail communicator nexus ab phone box fax s uppsala sweden
