Linked from another thread:
Things were almost naturally deregulated over here.

RJ11 modular jacks started to appear in about 1979. Before that the phones were usually hardwired or in some instances connected with what looked like a full size stereo headphone jack.

An old phone connection here looks like a small grey/black or beige box about the size or a bar of soap. Inside there are 4 terminals with lugs (only two were used). The phone was connected onto these with spade connectors.

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Once modular jacks arrived so did a vast array of imported phones, particularly from Canada and the USA. Mostly cordless phones, feature phones and fancier answering machines. All of which seemed to work fine on the irish phone network. As long as they tone dialled they supported all the services. As time's gone on they all support our Caller ID protocall too.

It spured Telecom Eireann to be a lot more creative with its own branded phones (almost all Nortel). So hey started marketing much fancier models.

There are 2 types of modular jack used here:
The normal skirting board style ones and another type that sits behind the phone on the wall. It has a standard 6-way RJ11 socket in the middle of a metal plate with 2 US standard phone mounting clips.

You use a short phone cord (<5cm) plug it in and mount the phone directly ontop of the socket.

Wallphone socket:

[Linked Image from trynci.com]

There are two raised screws for mounting the phone.


Standard phone socket:

[Linked Image]