The blue box era came to an end with the ever-increasing use of computerized phone systems which allowed telecommunication companies to discontinue the use of in-band signaling for call routing purposes. Instead, dialing information was sent on a separate channel which was inaccessible to the telecom customer. By the 1980s, much of the system in the US and Western Europe had been converted to use out-of-band signaling techniques. Phreaking has since become closely linked with computer hacking. This is sometimes called the H/P culture (with "H" standing for "hacking" and "P" standing for "phreaking").