Wow, interesting topic, at least for me as a telephone Geek.

Peter is right that the UK's PSTN standard doesn't have a standard for wall mounting. I find the US standard quite impressive, but it doesn't really do much for future proofing, ie external power etc... How does filtering your broadband signal work with one of those???

Back in the old days of the GPO (pre BT) when hardwiring a phone to the wall was the only option, all the wall mounted GPO models used a standard wall bracket, this held right to the point where buttons instead of a dial was introduced. After that no clear standard for wall mounting was introduced and BT formed the PSTN standard which is still in use in the UK today. I think it is a similar story across Europe, so if you have a phone designed for our market then you are unlikely to see the US standard adopted.

The UK system has may failure, mainly because BT do not want to maintain wiring inside peoples home anymore. To the extent where the current WLR3 product makes provision for putting the master socket on the outside of the house, and this has already started to happen in new builds. I think this is something quite common in other parts of the world, but it leaves us here in the UK at the mercy of your builder or electrician which means anything but the most basic scheme isn't going to happen, so wall mounting standards and hidden wiring are all but dreams for people like me

Cheers

Cris.