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 i am not quite so sure about the illegality of using a regular american phone on your home system i vaguely remember a few years ago when deutsche bundespost split into postdienst postbank and telekom there was some discussion about a new regulation i know that cordless or cellular phones still have to be approved by the telekom but does that hold true for regular phones in my areacode in germany frechen near koeln you can use touch tone dialing i assume however that most areas are still exclusively set to pulse dialing last time i checked jan the cologne areacode was still solely pulse dialing btw touch tone does become more common in germany bringin with it the flourishing of services in germany i just hope we ll all have isdn some time at an affordable price idle wishes markus iturriaga things go smoother with lard iturriag utkvx utk edu bring back the glory that was grease iturriag utkvx bitnet east tennessee lard advisory council millard fillmore lives we ve got what it takes to take what you ve got
