Vintage GPO Telephones, and stage ringers for Antique old phones (2024)

As an ex BT TO (Technical Officer) I often get asked "Do Old BT dial telephones still work OK on modern telephone lines in the UK?" The short answer is YES, Vintage rotary dial telephones still work in the UK, however the more detailed answer is a little bit more complicated. See the detail in the next sections below.This yes also assumes that your old rotary UK dial telephone has been converted and serviced "correctly", so that it will work on all modern "plug and socket" telephone land lines in the UK.

Plug and socket telephones first appeared in the UK in the early 1980's.

Please Note: There are slight differences in how these old BT/GPO telephones need to be serviced and adjusted dependant on the telephone service provider you use, for example TalkTalk is slightly different to BT and Sky. Please check this FAQ page for more detailed information on GPO Telephones

We also get asked if it is possible to ring standard old fashioned telephones on stage for use in plays, theatre and films. So we have now created a page to describe this in more detail. Please see menu heading "Telephone Ringers (for stage) at the top of this page.

Trivia: Its a little know fact that all modern land line telephones that you buy today are still "analogue telephones". There is no such thing as a digital land line telephone.
​Mobile telephones and VOIP telephones are digital, but not land line telephones. There are no plans to change this in the foreseeable future (as of January 2019) , which is a fantastic testament to a design that is over a hundred years old and still going strong.

Many people cherish these old phones partly because landline telephones are still the most reliable way of contacting the emergency services. Especially if you have a power-cut as old landline telephones draw their power from the telephone exchange, which in turn has substantial backup power in the form a battery rooms and standby generators.

All correctly converted GPO/BT dial telephones (1901-1986) will work fine for incoming calls regardless of which telephone provider you use in the UK.

Surprisingly the technology used in a telephone exchange to ring a telephone in a house has changed very little in the last hundred years. Only one minor change was made in the 1980's, this was not in the telephone exchange but to house telephone wiring. This change was made to accommodate the telephone plug and sockets that we know today.

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Before the 1980's vintage/antique telephones could not be unplugged and were "hard wired" into telephone junction boxes. This is the reason that telephones made before 1980-1983 need converting for modern use. In technical terms these vintage telephones need converting correctly to plug & socket and to have a Ringer Equivalence Number (REN) of 1.

If these old BT/GPO telephones are converted correctly they will just plug into a standard modern telephone socket.

As always the maximum recommended number of landlinetelephones (antique or new) on one telephone line is 4 (assuming each telephone has a REN of 1). A partially/incorrectly converted old vintage telephone will usually have a REN of 4 all by itself. So it will use up 4 telephones worth of ringing power, potentially preventing other telephones on the same phone line from ringing reliably, so it is important that these old telephones have been converted using the correct methods and tools.

Please Note, if an antique telephone is NOT converted correctly it may appear to work, however the vintage telephone could cause intermittent problems with any other telephones, or telephone equipment (such as Broadband) that you have in the house. The vintage phone may also test very strangely when tested from the telephone exchange and an incorrect conversion of an antique telephone can often cause other minor annoyances such as "bell tinkle".

BT and SKY are very reliable with pulse dialling and 99.9% of old dial telephones will dial out reliably. However it is believed that other telephone providers offer a less reliable pulse dialling service.For example although "TalkTalk" support pulse dialling some of their telephone exchanges are not believed to be as fault tolerant when connected to these old pulse dial telephones. This is why some vintage telephones will dial out and some slightly out of adjustment vintage telephones will not. Even though the exact same GPO telephone will work fine with other providers such as BT and Sky.

This lack of fault tolerance by some telephone providers for older pulse dials has resulted in vintage telephone restorers being faced with a problem, in that all mechanical dials will vary slightly in speed and ratio over time. So they either refrain from converting telephones for certain telephone providers or adjust them to work and then exclude the "dialling out" guarantee from the warranty for those thankfully small number of providers.

As already mentioned antique telephones will always ring in, so you can answer calls and converse fine regardless of the telephone provider you use.

If you ring call centres for Banks, Utilities etc that use automated menus one function that will not work with old pulse dial telephones is the navigation of the menu systems. This is where you are asked to dial 1 for this department or a 2 for that etc. This is because these call centre automation systems require "Tone Dialling" to work.One tip is to do nothing when asked to press your phone keys and most of the time a real "Human" will come on the line and talk to you. Although you may have to initially wait, many people claim this is sometimes quicker in the long run than working through all the automated menus.

The other option is to have more than one telephone and then use your modern "tone dialling" telephone when you know you are going to talk to a call centre.

When I refer to Old BT or GPO telephones I mean telephones ranging from 1901 to 1986.

The earliest UK Telephones that you see for sale, or that people tend to have converted for modern use are the Candlestick Telephones usually from the 1920's and 1930's.

• Candlestick Telephones
• 1920's Telephones
• 1930's Telephones
• Tele No 150 Telephones

Note Antique Candlestick telephones always had a separate Bell inside what was called a "Bell Set". This vintage bell set contained both the mechanical bell and the telephone components need for speech. So if you don’t have a bell set the candlestick phone will not ring on incoming calls and the speech quality will be appalling.

After that in the 1930's came the classic Art Deco Bakelite Telephones. Up to this point all these old BT/GPO Telephones tend to be collectively referred to as Antique Telephones .

After 1959 Old BT telephones such as the 706 model telephones, 1960's Telephones (see pictures above) are referred to as Vintage Telephones. Finally the telephones made for BT in the 1970's and early 1980s such as the 746 telephones are sometimes referred to Vintage Phones and sometimes as Retro Telephones.

Most collectors regard the British 746 telephones made in the 1970's and 1980's as the last of the "real telephones" in terms of build quality and engineering. "They were built to last forever" and can be serviced and if needed repaired to keep going and going.