Tomorrow's Telephones

"People have to forget the notion of dial, ring, talk and m listen," says Randall Tobias, president of AT&T Consumer Products. The phone that is within easy reach of most consumers is about to undergo a dramatic transformation. It will no longer be just an instrument to call Uncle Fred in Fredonia. The phone of the future will be more mobile, do a host of different tasks and be part of a complex, far-reaching information network. Says Hans Mattes, director of AT&T's Home Communications Laboratory: "The telephone will be the cornerstone of a communication system in the home."

AT&T is already offering two new versions of its standard telephone that show the way the phone is going. Both instruments have key pads and display the date and time or the number of the person being called on calculator-style windows. The Touch-a-matic 1600 ($160) can store up to 16 phone numbers. The $680 Genesis Telesystem, which AT&T Chairman Charles L. Brown uses at home, can forward calls to another number, remember 75 alphabetized names and numbers and restrict outgoing calls.

With more and more homes empty during the day because both parents are at work and children at school, telephone manufacturers believe a variety of emergency and remote feature.8 will be hot sellers. AT&T offers a fire-alert system linking smoke alarms to phones that will dial two numbers when smoke is detected ($199 a system, $29 a link). A pocket-size medical transmitter ($49) alerts a unit ($199) that dials up to two numbers if a patient needs immediate attention. Gulf + Western's Sensaphone ($250) monitors room temperatures, sound levels and electrical systems. If a room's temperature rises above or drops below a preset level when a householder is away, perhaps because of a fire or a pipe-freezing chill, the device will automatically send a message to one of four emergency numbers. Technicom's Energy Control System, attached to a phone, allows owners to turn appliances on and off while away from home.

Cordless phones, priced around $200, first came on the market three years ago. In 1982 sales reached 2 million units, and industry observers expect that about one-third of the 19 million phones sold this year will be cordless. The walk-around phones now have a range of about 700 feet from the base unit, but they are expected to become more powerful as technology develops. Uniden, Mura, AT&T, ITT and Cobra are the major sellers of cordless models.

Cellular phones rely on low-power transmitters in designated cells, or districts, to relay signals from passing automobiles equipped with the mobile phones. Last month Ameritech Mobile Communications introduced in Chicago the first commercial cellular mobile radio service. Bell Atlantic's Mobile Systems expects to launch cellular service early next year in Washington, Baltimore and Philadelphia. By 1990 1.5 million cellular phones could be operating in the U.S.

The products currently on the market, though, are nothing compared with what is about to arrive. AT&T is working on silicon chips that will recognize individual voiceprints. That way the phone could screen incoming calls or allow a person to call his or her own phone from a distant location and set off some operation like turning off the stove. The phone could even become a substitute for an apartment or house key. A microphone at the door would transmit the voice pattern to a phone. If it recognizes the voice pattern, the phone would then activate a mechanism to unlock the door.

Telephones and video screens in the future will work closely together. AT&T already sells a Sceptre videotex terminal ($900) for shopping and marketing. Several manufacturers are working on a flat-screen terminal that would display bank balances and shopping guides--or the image of a conversation partner. "The telephone will be a computer terminal as you now understand it," says Tobias.

The telephone linked to a computer screen will become enormously flexible as an information-retrieval system. Viewers will be able to look at an index on a screen and touch it or point to it to get more detailed information. For example, the viewer could point to the word Beirut in a world-news index, and the screen would project a full report on the subject. "People may see all this as new," says Mattes, "but we will simply be making available to a wider public services that already exist."

It was in 1946 that Cartoonist Chester Gould gave Dick Tracy a two-way wrist radio. A similar device may not be far off. Says Tobias: "Except for the long-life battery needed to power it, the technology for the Dick Tracy watch phone is here." This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.