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The Carterfone is a device by Thomas Carter. It connects a system to the telephone system, allowing someone on the radio to talk to someone on the phone. This makes it a direct predecessor to today's . The connection is acoustic -- sound travels through the air between the Carterfone and a conventional telephone that is part of the telephone system.

The reason the Carterfone connected the telephone and radio acoustically, instead of electrically, is that telephone network owners were legally allowed to and did bar devices they did not own from being connected electrically to their networks.

The Carterfone decision (13 F.C.C.2d 420) was a landmark decision that opened the public switched telephone network (PSTN) in America to customer-premises equipment (CPE). Twelve years earlier, a court had ruled in the Hush-A-Phone case that devices could mechanically connect to the telephone system (such as a rubber cup attached to a phone-company-owned telephone) without the permission of AT&T. In 1968, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) extended this privilege by allowing the Carterfone and other devices to be connected electrically to the AT&T network, as long as they did not cause harm to the system.


Description
The device is , but not electrically, connected to the public switched telephone network. It was electrically connected to the of the system, and got its power from the base station. All electrical parts were encased in , an early plastic.

When someone on a wished to speak to someone on phone, or "landline" (e.g., "Central dispatch, patch me through to "), the station operator at the base would dial the telephone number. When callers on the radio and on the telephone were both in contact with the base station operator, the handset of the operator's telephone was placed on a built into the Carterfone device. A voice-operated switch in the Carterfone automatically switched on the radio transmitter when the telephone caller was speaking; when they stopped speaking, the radio returned to a receiving condition. A separate speaker was attached to the Carterfone to allow the base station operator to monitor the conversation, adjust the voice volume, and hang up their telephone when the conversation had ended.


Landmark regulatory decision
This particular device was involved in a landmark decision related to telecommunications. In a twelve-year prior decision from 1956, a court had ruled in the Hush-A-Phone case that devices could mechanically connect to the telephone system (such as a rubber cup attached to a phone-company-owned telephone) without the permission of AT&T. In 1968, the Federal Communications Commission extended this privilege by allowing the Carterfone and other devices to be connected electrically to the AT&T network, as long as they did not cause harm to the system. This ruling, commonly called "the Carterfone decision" (13 F.C.C.2d 420), created the possibility of selling devices that could connect to the phone system using a protective coupler and opened the market to customer-premises equipment. The decision is often referred to as "any lawful device", allowing later like answering machines, , and (which initially used the same type of manual acoustic coupler as the Carterfone) to proliferate.

In February 2007, a for was filed with the FCC by , requesting the FCC to apply the Carterfone regulations to the wireless industry—which would mean that OEMs, portals and others will be able to offer and services without the cellular operators needing to approve the . However, on April 1, 2008, FCC chairman Kevin Martin indicated that he would oppose Skype's request. (November 11, 2008). "Democratic win could herald wireless Net neutrality" . . Accessed June 1, 2010. On April 17, 2015, this petition for rulemaking was dismissed without prejudice by the FCC at the request of Skype's current owner, Microsoft Corporation. FCC order


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