I agree, but someone could be old-fashioned in some areas and not in others. Selling telephone receivers was a recent development so he must have had to learn all about it for work. Particularly as British Telecom had been threatening in 1981 to cut off subscribers who installed unauthorised telephone equipment.
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=no1t1O90m7MC&pg=PA283&lpg=PA283&dq=when+people+were+allowed+to+buy+telephones+instead+of+renting+uk&source=bl&ots=hFLv-fVKHj&sig=ACfU3U1VJ0DbY-TgZeofcdbudhWq4EHA5g&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEw[Name removed]oZ-mq97pAhVSQMAKHUlLDu8Q6AEwDHoECAsQAQ#v=onepage&q=when%20people%20were%20allowed%20to%20buy%20telephones%20instead%20of%20renting%20uk&f=false
Mr Pike was born over a century ago, in 1919.
His business was working on GPO lines and telephones, and at the age of 65, when BT had only been in existence for four years, it would have been second nature for him to refer to all phones, regardless of whether they were push button or rotary, as GPO phones. And the GPO did introduce the Statesman.
I dare say he still referred to BT as the GPO in speech, but when making the statement he had to be precise.
Like I said, people get stuck in their ways...
How many of you you now still call British Telecom, BT?
BT hasn’t been in existence for 14 years — it became OpenReach in 2006; I bet hardly any of you call it OpenReach. I bet you still call it BT...
Whatever, Mr Pike was obviously referring to the Statesman phone, it’s obvious, and it doesn’t even matter...