Cordless Phone History
The first cordless phone was invented in 1965 but it could not be sold because it's radio signals were so powerful that they interfered with aircraft radio. Other cordless phone patents were applied for in the 1970's but it wasn't until around 1980 that a cordless phone was developed for consumer use. These early models operated at 27Mhz so the call quality was poor and privacy was non-existent due to very few channels for the phone to operate on.
In 1986 the FCC approved the 47-49 MHz frequency band for use with cordless phones. This helped some but problems of call quality and privacy still existed. It wasn't until 1990 when the frequency band was raised to 900Mhz that the cordless phone became much more practical with higher call quality and better battery life. To top that off, in 1994, the first digital phone was introduced, which greatly increased call privacy over the older analog phones.
Over the last 15 years the advance of digital cordless phones, higher phone frequencies, and phone features has been steady. The 2.8Ggz phones came in 1998, followed by the 5.8Ghz phones in 2003, and finally the 1.9Ghz band was designated for cordless phones in the US in 2005. This 1.9Ghz band is known as DECT 6.0 in the US. See our Cordless Phone Frequency page for a more detailed look at frequencies.
Today the newest cordless phone models are an array of sleek and sophisticated units, with features and call quality that could not have been imagined in the early days. We are looking forward to the continued development of the cordless phone product and are excited to wonder they will come up with next!
