Just like old cars. ( pre 1955 non GM , pre 1970s English mostly) all had positive ground.
Who came up with the idea of negative ground anyway? It is somewhere between nonsensical and stupid. No not Ben Franklin, I'll bet it was Edison.
All those school children being taught that current goes one way and the electrons go the other way. That's if they are lucky, usually they just get taught it wrong.
There's no good reason a cell tower can't connect two phones in it's radius, nor normal phones inside the network can't call each other even when the outside line fails.
Phone systems aren't designed for connecting people, they are designed for billing people. That's the reason. Well maybe that's not a good reason.
See that manhole?
A few years ago ALL of the wires and fiber that connect lower Manhattan to the rest of the world, and North America to Europe passed under it or another one within 2000 feet of there. Maybe it still does. An ISO container full of thermite would be mighty inconvenient there.
Well at least it seems to have that lady and her dog protecting it.
"More software projects have gone awry for lack of calendar time than for all other causes combined." -- Fred Brooks, Jr., _The Mythical Man Month_
