Before the mobile telephone but long after smoke signals, there were cordless telephones, a land line with a cordless handheld handset. Cordless telephone conversations are made over radio waves transmitted between the phone’s base and the cordless handset. Communications between these two parts can be very limited, with a complete loss of signals loss between different floors not an uncommon occurrence.
The base station itself is linked to a fixed telephone line like standard phones, drawing power from a wall outlet. It is this base station that continues to distinguish a cordless telephone from cellphones (which require no base station), regardless of the much increased technology of cordless phone units. Today one can even find some cell phone-like features offered by corldess telephones.
While they have certainly come a long way, when cordless telephones were introduced to the market the devices were not very reliable and rather expensive. Not only was the operational range rather limited with poor quality sound, but there was no real security or privacy because signals could be easily intercepted by other cordless telephones in the area due to the limited range of channels available. It took about 10 and a half years for cordless telephones to become familiar household items, thanks to the opening up of the frequency range to 9 hundred megahertz with the arrival of DSS technology.
These two technical innovations assuaged concerns over eavesdropping and cordless telephones became popular products. Though cellular telephones are pervasive and here for good, many still keep landlines in their houses for a number of reasons, and cordless telephones remain a viable market, with new models introduced fairly frequently. When selecting a cordless telephone, the very first thing to bear in mind is security:these phones are really just radio transmitters and thus subject to eavesdropping, though nowadays requiring a reasonably high level of technical proficiency to do so successfully. In this respect make sure to choose DSS technology, at the 2.4 gigahertz frequency at a minimum ( less is less secure while more cuts into battery lifespan ).
And thus we come to the only other major issue: battery power. Avoid nickel-cadium if at all possible; they will exhibit a so-called memory effect unless they are fully drained before recharging. Aside from these two concerns, a cordless telephone’s other characteristics are simply matters of personal taste.