The only time I come into contact with DECT is during the yearly CCC hacker congress in Germany.

And of course I bring an old phone just for the fun of it.

Approximately everyone over 50 in Germany uses a landline phone when at home, and of those just about all use DECT.

I have one or two DECT phones but no landline for them any more.

The last 'landline' was going out over the fiber anyway and was some kind of emulation. The router had a phone jack to plug an old school phone in.

Back when it was at the BCC, I remember when they used to tell you to Absolutely Not buy one at Media Markt over across Alexanderplatz and just return it after the Congress. Phun times.

In Germany, many people love routers from AVM called “Fritz!Box”. They all can act as a DECT base station to use with either normal landline or Internet telephony.

AVM also has a line up of smart home devices based on the DECT standard that work in conjunction with their routers.

I think that's because rabbit was slang for antennae in general, due to rabbit-ears TV antennae.

Isn't the term "rabbit ears" more of an American thing? Can't recall anyone using it in the UK.

It was a missed branding opportunity to make the Rabbit mobile phone with a pair of rabbit ears antenna.

Not sure about the UK, but was common in Ireland.

I think the Rabbit name was chosen more because rabbit can be used as slang for talk and chatter, you might say some people were “rabitting away together” and so on if they were conversing at length[1]. In the UK most portable TVs used halo type antennas for reception AFAIk, this might be related to the UK only using UHF for 625 line colour TV (and digital)[2] whilst the US also uses VHF. The main living room TV was / is usually fed from a roof mounted yagi antenna though.

[1] Just don’t use the phase “at it like rabbits” to mean conversations. Unless you mean Ugandan discussions… [2] VHF was used for the old 405 line system, which was turned off in the ‘80s.

> I think the Rabbit name was chosen more because rabbit can be used as slang for talk and chatter

There was a 1981 song in the UK by Chas & Dave called Rabbit which was about people endlessly rabbiting on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGNojF9qKS0

edit as I see this has been posted further down.

DECT still has its uses. I've encouraged more than a few people to buy multi-handset base units that have Bluetooth built in for elderly parents (mine is Panasonic; they call it Link2Cell). Leave cell phone in kitchen (or wherever base is) to charge, carry a DECT handset on you at all times. If you fall and break a hip, you're never without a phone. It can make and receive calls from two different cellphones.

Hm, I don't understand, why not just carry the cell phone directly?

Eventually, you will have to charge it.

Do elderly people find that hard? My parents haven't had any trouble with it.

The point is that if you are frail, you should always have a phone on you no matter how short the distance is.

But you also need to charge the DECT phone.

Obvious: Go ahead, state me!

How about I stare something equally obvious: If you have to charge the DECT phone, then it has no advantage over the mobile, which brings me to my original question, why not just give them a mobile?

Is that line of reasoning obvious enough to follow, or do I need to explain further?

Because you only need to carry the DECT phone while the mobile is charging. And they're usually good for a week or more on one charge.

The point is: how do you ensure that you always have a phone on you?

Ah, I see, I thought the mobile would need to persistently be next to the DECT base. What's basically a long-range Bluetooth headset makes sense, thanks.

Needs to be next to the DECT base only if you want to use the cordless handset on the mobile line. So yes, go about your day with mobile, then when you charge at night, leave it next to the base and carry the DECT around the house.

It is precisely a long-distance Bluetooth headset in phone form factor. The multi-handset, single-base units are very good.

Bubbles like most of the world?

> DECT in general (the successor to CT-2 which Rabbit used) is still going strong, though in some bubbles people are shocked to hear anyone uses anything other than a mobile phone.

A lot of modern baby monitors use DECT. Works much better than the old timey one-way radio type too, You'll get alerted if the connection drops, and on a lot of models you even get two-way communication.