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After the introduction of the European version of OMNI PABX, Atea decided to make a smaller version of the system for the UK market. One problem: the cost of the attendant's console was too high for such a system.
A second problem was the cost of the American digital featurephone. For market reasons we had offer a featurephone, but the cost price of the American version was higher then the market price in the UK.
Therefore ATEA made up a specification of such a phone, and decided to give it to a British subcontractor to design and manufacture it. The phone was delivered as a simple operator console, but also as an analog featurephone, with success!
Unfortunatly, the british subcontractor went broke. ATEA could obtain all manufacturing tools and firmware, and manufactured the phone themselve at the Herentals plant. Also new firmware versions were released from time to time.
New versions had to be tested, so some "privileged" people got such a phone on their desk, serving as a field trial. One of them was Fernand Coppens, somebody with many years of telephony experience. He was a top expert in trunk design, but had also a good feeling to test new features in his day to day work.
This phone, usable on any PABX, had some unique features when connected to a ATEA OMNI PABX. i.e. the calling number was sent with a proprietary protocol to the phone, using DTMF tones. A feature which became later standard in ISDN, but with a different protocol.
On September 30, 1993 Fernand (from who I got my interest in Atea's history, it seems to be a virus) had to take early retirement, and offered me his phone. In those days I had a digital feature phone with a voice and data connection on my desk, so I could not connect it, the phone remained in my drawer for years.
When I had to retire in March, 2004, this phone was obsolete, so I took it home, and added it to my small collection.
After his retirement, Fernand got long cancer, and passed away at the age of 61 in March 1996, way too early...
Last changed on 28/05/11 by Jan Verhelst