Daddy, what's a "dialtone"?

I had to laugh when I saw this tweet from Dave Troy last week:

With the ubiquity of mobile phones and the change they bring to the dialing paradigm, will the generation growing up now only really know about "dial tone" as a historical artifact mentioned in places like Wikipedia?

For those of us who are older, we grew up with idea that you picked up the phone, listened for the dial tone, and THEN dialed your number. But only AFTER you heard the dial tone indicating that everything was working.

Today of course we pull out our mobile phone, enter a number or choose it from our address book - and then hit the "send" or "call" button (or whatever icon is on your phone, usually a green one). We don't "listen for a dial tone"... because there isn't one! Similarly, on the SIP phone on my desk that is connected into our corporate IP-PBX, I enter the phone number I'm calling and press the "Dial" button.

Again, no "dial tone".

Amazing times we live in...

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