Wireless

I saw a post on a newsgroup where someone was wondering about a strange aerial that was strapped to their chimney. After a bit of explanation it turns out that it was one of the grey hexagonal dishes that the radio-landline provider Ionica used.

Ionica, in the mid to late nineties, had a great idea to take on BT. By installing microwave dishes onto houses that connected to a base station, they could provide a fixed line link from a house to an exchange without digging up the road. When I lived in Birmingham, I was one of the first to have this put in.

Engineers turned up, and strapped the grey dish to the chimney, and run a wire down to the house to a grey junction box. A wire went from the back of the box through the wall into a larger white box with a rechargeable battery in, and that was connected to a similar sized box which had two BT style sockets on it. When powered up from the mains, picking up the phone would send a microwave signal to the base station and give you a dialtone and you were away.

Sadly, Ionica didn't last very long - I myself had problems with the system. Trees waving in the wind, or indeed a heavy rainfall would leave our phone detached from the exchange. Frequently, I'd be busy chatting on the phone when it would cut out and be unusable for ten minutes at a time, so by the time that the company started to go under, I'd bailed out and had the equipment removed.

I think the idea was great - all the functions of a standard BT line, with three numbers and three distinct rings, and the possibility of a second line all in one small package. The technology just wasn't ready at the time.

I never understood why the mobile phone operators didn't jump on the bandwagon - GSM and 3G technology should be advanced enough now for someone to come up with fixed line equipment over GSM/3G, so why haven't we seen "Vodafone Home" or "Three House"? Seems silly as I'm sure that the relevant technology would have been less intrusive than the Ionica dish. Perhaps it's to come.

Interestingly, the Wikipedia entry makes out that Ionica will return. I'd like to see this. The system had potential. Have a look through their old website.... archive.org still has it!