Yeah, calling cards. I had one when I was a teenager, my dad got it for me so I could always call home.
And then along came numeric pagers. That was how you knew you'd arrived. Still needed the phone booth, though.
At the job I'm in now (going on 24 years now…) I had a company calling card and a pager. That and the voicemail system I ran had a toll free access number. I even set it up to send me a page when I got a voice mail in my box. High times.
And then we got fancy with "2 way pagers". Pretty cool because you could also read condensed new stories on it, 3 lines at a time. That fad lasted about a year, then along came company issued cell phones. The company issued cell phones came out of the "employee retention fund". Someone decided we'd all stick around if they gave us the cell phones. Didn't work, but it was a nice benefit. At one point the IRS wanted to tax employees on benefits like that. Would have been awful to have to track business and personal calls. Luckily enough people raised hell that the IRS backed down.
I haven't owned my own cell phone since about 1999. Always company issued/company paid. Was a riot when they sent me up into Canada for training, and kept calling me asking me questions. Racked up a $500 cell phone bill that month and freaked a lot of people out. Was sort of sweet to sit down with the bill and show them all the work calls that cost so much. I think they finally changed the cell phone plans after that.
But, back on topic. Yeah, marine VHF operator was pretty cool. I had a co-worker that had a Motorola VHF HT1000 that had a bunch of ham frequencies in it. He put the local marine operator channel in it and could make phone calls. That was big time right there.
And the last HF marine telephone call I heard was late 80's or early 90's. Was on a ship and picked up a really strong signal out in the gulf of Mexico and realized I was listening to half a phone call from a cruise ship. Full duplex call, could only pick up the ship side.
