Cordless in the Local Loop

Abstract

Since its introduction, and until very recently, the telephone network has used wired analogue circuits to connect the user’s telephone to the local exchange of the network; this interconnection is referred to as the “local loop”. In the 1980s the arrival of cheap analogue cordless telephones enabled the wire to be broken within the home, over the short distance between the handset and the telephone socket on the wall. Whilst previously radio has been used for isolated long-range rural links, it is only within the last decade that the idea of using radio to provide the link from an ordinary telephone subscriber, perhaps in a city, to his or her local exchange — the concept of “wireless local loop” — has emerged, as the costs of radio technology have fallen and wireless local loop has become an economically viable proposition.