We just got a Philips SE745 DECT cordless phone which we would like to wall mount. The problem is that the only wall mount provison is two horizontally oriented keyholes that are not spaced the same as the posts on a standard US phone plate which I believe is around 4 inches and is typically mounted vertically! No, this phone has the keyholes for the posts spaced 2.5 inches apart and horizontal. Is this how phones are mounted in Europe or something? Is there any way to mount this thing on our wall here in the states using the box already reserved for this on our wall?

Thanks for your help,
Stu

For screws?

In 1965 in the US, AT&T released a new model phone called the Trimline. At the time, AT&T didn't allow (or at least support) anyone else's phones on their network. One of the options for the Trimline phone was a wall mount, which (I'm pretty sure) was the only wallmount phone available. The mount was accomplished by having a combination mounting plate and phone jack. The phone was hung on the wall by sliding its slots onto two metal studs permanently affixed to the mounting plate, and the jack, located about halfway between the studs, received a plug mounted directly to the back of the phone which could travel half an inch or so up and down to allow for the mounting.

This setup became something of a de facto standard, and virtually every wall-mount phone sold in the US has the mounting points matching the spacing of those original studs from 1965, though most use a short cable to plug in rather than a bound one like from the original Trimline.

So that's what he's talking about.

Four candles ?

FWIW, there's no such standard, de facto or otherwise, in the UK that I know of. Wall-mounting a phone means drilling holes for wallplugs and screws matching whatever keyholes are in the back of the phone -- and then having a trailing cable to wherever it plugs in. This is, of course, much less neat and tidy than the US system. Modern phones that need a power cable as well as the phone cable, are even less neat and tidy.

Peter

Depending on where the current holes are, and what's on the inside of the phone where the holes are supposed to be for the standard mount, I've found that a dremel works great (I've not done this with a phone, but I have with a DSL modem).

I thought there wasn't and that that was the source of Trevor's (apparent) confusion, which is why I gave that diatribe.

Also, I was wrong about it being the Trimline. It was the 2554.

This might actually have been the beginning of the RJ-style connectors for telephones. Before this in the US, we had large square four-prong connectors, assuming they weren't hard-wired.

Found some good pictures:

Wow, interesting topic, at least for me as a telephone Geek.

Peter is right that the UK's PSTN standard doesn't have a standard for wall mounting. I find the US standard quite impressive, but it doesn't really do much for future proofing, ie external power etc... How does filtering your broadband signal work with one of those???

Back in the old days of the GPO (pre BT) when hardwiring a phone to the wall was the only option, all the wall mounted GPO models used a standard wall bracket, this held right to the point where buttons instead of a dial was introduced. After that no clear standard for wall mounting was introduced and BT formed the PSTN standard which is still in use in the UK today. I think it is a similar story across Europe, so if you have a phone designed for our market then you are unlikely to see the US standard adopted.

The UK system has may failure, mainly because BT do not want to maintain wiring inside peoples home anymore. To the extent where the current WLR3 product makes provision for putting the master socket on the outside of the house, and this has already started to happen in new builds. I think this is something quite common in other parts of the world, but it leaves us here in the UK at the mercy of your builder or electrician which means anything but the most basic scheme isn't going to happen, so wall mounting standards and hidden wiring are all but dreams for people like me

Cheers

Cris.

For wall-mounted phones needing a DSL filter, several vendors now sell variations on this theme:

And you can see an additional jack on the side of that plate. They were actually in existence before then for multi-line circuits, although no terribly common.

Also, the sliding plug thing that you see on that phone is basically never seen anymore. It's almost always connected via a several-inch cable now.

For the telephone geeks, the reason for all of that is that until about 1980, AT&T rented you your telephone. They didn't sell any at all, as far as I recall. (You'll see a marking on that phone that says "Bell System Property/Not For Sale".) As such, it was in their best interests to make a phone that would never break. So they were made of steel and were really exceptionally well engineered.

But now it's all commodity stuff, and those people have no interest in making a quality product. If anything, they're more interested in planned obsolescence. So there's no desire to put any engineering effort into something that (1) has a smallish user base and (2) might possibly fail before the warranty is up.

They may not be high quality but a phone functionally equivalent to the old bell ones is about 10 dollars and they do last quite a while.

Yeah, but could you drop it off of a ten story building and expect it to remain functional?

Also, you can't hit one side of the receiver and have it pop into your hand any more. Which is sad.

My undergrad apartment came with an ancient rotary phone, hard-wired to the wall (probably a Western Electric Model 500). The thing had the "modern" desk phone shape, but weighed a ton. And the sound quality on it was absolutely fantastic. I miss that old thing. Poking around eBay, it looks like these things are selling for under $50. Hmm....

Beware overloading your phone line.

ISTR that when i was a kid we had a brown 2500 made by ITT (apparently now Cortelco). It was not the same heavy-duty Western Electric phone that we had elsewhere in the house. Caveat emptor.

Oh, so we've moved on from the 4 contact 1/4" jack? Many is the times I removed the phone to the upstairs socket so that my parents couldn't hear me making obscene suggestions to the girlfriend: she was in Wembley and I was in Chislehurst - so she was fairly safe agreeing to my suggestions.
I remember the first time that I went to the west coast of Ireland, in my pal Jimmy's parents village, you answered the phone depending on the number of rings: At that time, Ireland had two directories: Dublin and rest of Ireland.
I'll hold on the joys of sharing a party line with an alcoholic!

Hmm... valid concern. According to that Wikipedia page, the Model 500 draws around the same juice as the cheapo wired phones that I've already got, so if I just replaced one with the other, I'd be in good shape.