TELECOM Digest     Sun, 30 Oct 2005 17:59:00 EST    Volume 24 : Issue 493

Inside This Issue:                             Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    Sri Lanka Cutting International Phone Links to Stop Scams (AFP NewsWire)
    Hurricane Victim Food Ripped Off, Resold on E-Bay (Laura Jakes Jordan)
    Phone Shown in 'Capote' / RJ Connector History (C_shore)
    Google Wants to Dominate Madison Avenue, Too (Monty Solomon)
    Are There Prepaid Cellular Plans That Use Existing Phones? (William Warren)
    WU History (David Josephson)
    Re: Los Angeles Numbering, 1940s (Tim@Backhome.org)
    Re: Old Chicago Numbering (BobT)
    Re: Old Chicago Numbering (jsw@ivgate)

Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the
Internet.  All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and
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               ===========================

Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be
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viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome.

We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we
are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because
we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands
against crime.   Geoffrey Welsh

               ===========================

See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details
and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest.  

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Agence France Presse <afp@telecom-digest.org> 
Subject: Sri Lanka Cutting Phone Links to International Points to Stop Scams
Date: Sun, 30 Oct 2005 13:26:00 -0600


Sri Lanka will cut international direct dialing to 13 countries next week
in a bid to stop "modem hijacking" and Internet porn scams.

The main international gateway operator, Sri Lanka Telecom, was asked
to halt direct dialling to the 13 nations on Tuesday after complaints
that subscribers were billed for long-distance calls they never made.

Aruna Amarasekara, director-general of the Telecommunications
Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka, said the blockage will be in force
for three months but subscribers could still make operator-assisted
calls if necessary.

"We have decided to do this because of modem hijacking," Amarasekara
told AFP Sunday.

He said local subscribers were also advised to block international
access on their telephones to prevent unauthorised dialling by
malicious programs, or diallers, installed by some websites.

Some websites surreptitiously install diallers on a surfer's computer
and use the phone connection to dial long-distance telephone numbers,
running up huge bills, he said.

Some calls terminate at porn sites.

Sri Lanka has found that most of the unauthorised calls terminated in
the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, the Cook Islands, the Wallis and Futana
Islands, Papua New Guinea, Nauru, Tuvalu, Tokelau, Western Samoa and
Kiribati.


Copyright 2005 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The information
contained in the AFP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten
or redistributed without the prior written authority of Agence France
Presse.

NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the
daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at
http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new
articles daily.

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------------------------------

From: Lara Jakes Jordan <ap@telecom-digest.org> 
Subject: Hurricane Victim Food Ripped Off, Resold on E-Bay
Date: Sun, 30 Oct 2005 13:23:47 -0600


U.S. Investigates Sale of MREs on eBay
By LARA JAKES JORDAN, Associated Press Writer

Uncle Sam has tried to feed millions of hurricane victims this year
with Meals-Ready-to-Eat, or MREs, only to find that many of them have
become Meals-Ready-for-eBay.

The government is looking into whether eBay sellers in Gulf Coast
states are trying to profit from military foodstuffs handed out for
free following hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma.

Representatives for eBay, the online auctioneer company, say it is
impossible to prove that any of the meals were meant for hurricane
victims.  They note that MREs can be bought in camping stores and
Army-Navy surplus outlets.

But at least some of the MREs advertised on the Web site are being
sold from Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida and other Gulf states, and
are individually packaged with a disclaimer that clearly notes:
"U.S. Government property - Commercial resale is unlawful."

"If it's true, that's pretty reprehensible," said Cheryl Guidry
Tyiska, deputy director of the National Organization of Victim
Assistance. "There are a lot of pretty hungry people down there who
could use the food for free."

One seller, identified as from "Louisiana Cajun Country," described
being hit "with the eye of Rita." Bidding had reached $50.99 for the
seller's unopened case of MREs by Saturday.

"It was very depressing to come back and see that Rita took half our
roof with her and left a lot of trees on the fence," the seller
wrote. "I am still in a state of shock and a daze. It has really been
a mess. I thank God for my solid gold eBay customers. Thanks for your
prayers."

Bidding on other MREs, from Biloxi, Miss., to Pensacola, Fla., ranged
from 99 cents to over $100. One case, from Lake Arthur, La., was being
advertised as "real military issue" for $36.02. Its 12 individually
wrapped meals included beef ravioli, chicken with Thai sauce and a
veggie burger with barbecue sauce.

E-mails sent by The Associated Press to eBay's MRE sellers in Gulf
Coast states went unanswered.

The Homeland Security Department's inspector general has asked
investigators to examine the suspicious MREs on eBay, spokeswoman
Tamara Faulkner said. In the past, the Pentagon has complained about
MRE sales on eBay, Defense Logistics Agency spokeswoman Marcia Klein
said. The agency has not decided whether to pursue the current eBay
sales, though officials are considering all avenues, she said.

The Pentagon pays $86.98 for a case of MREs, or about $7.25 per meal,
Klein said. The Web site for a chain of Army-Navy stories in the
Washington area listed a case of 12 MREs for $96.

Told of the eBay sales, the acting director of the Federal Emergency
Management Agency, R. David Paulison, said he "will not tolerate any
type of fraud, and we will pursue it to the fullest extent." FEMA
distributed millions of MREs to hurricane victims over the past two
months.

eBay spokesman Hani Durzy said the San Jose, Calif.-based company has
not received any complaints from government or law enforcement
officials about MRE sales in the wake of the recent storms.

Additionally, Durzy said, eBay has asked the Pentagon to cite the law
that would prohibits the sale of its MREs, but has not gotten an
answer.

"When we asked them to show us a law to show it is unlawful, and they
were unable to do so, we said they're legal as far as we're
concerned," Durzy said.

eBay does prohibit the selling of expired MREs that are not advertised
as a collector's item, Durzy said. Items that would violate the law if
sold through eBay are removed from the site, he said.

On the Net:
Federal Emergency Management Agency: http://www.fema.gov/
eBay: http://www.ebay.com/

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. 

NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the
daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at
http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new
articles daily.

For more Associated Press headlines, please go to:
http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html

------------------------------

From: C_shore <davidk99@gmail.com>
Subject: Phone Shown in 'Capote' / RJ Connector History
Date: 30 Oct 2005 10:37:16 -0800
Organization: http://groups.google.com


In the movie Capote I just saw the actor is shown using a phone with a
RJ connector.  The time period would have been 1966 or before.

I hate sloppy history in movie props. Were RJ connectors in use in 66?

This could be the worst film/phone mistake since a movie (sorry I
forgot the name) that showed an actor using a Pacific Bell pay phone
in New York City some years back.

D


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: They were in use beginning sometime in
the early to middle 1960's, but they were not the little plastic things
which plug in and snap out like today. They were four-prong metal
things with a plastic cover; they more closely resembled wall outlets
for electrical cords.  My private phone line at Windermere Hotel in
1963-64 (HYDe Park 3714)had one, although the 'house' phone (off of
the Windermere switchboard) was hard wired. When I eventually got a
new 'two line phone' (turn button to select desired line, either
private line or switchboard) to go in my bedroom, that one also had an
RJ connector, I think either 1965 or 1966.)  PAT] 

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 30 Oct 2005 12:27:21 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
Subject: Google Wants to Dominate Madison Avenue, Too


By SAUL HANSELL

Mountain View, Calif.

In many ways, Larry Page and Sergey Brin seem an unlikely pair to lead
an advertising revolution. As Stanford graduate students sketching out
the idea that became Google, the two software engineers sniffed in an
academic paper that "advertising-funded search engines will inherently
be biased toward the advertisers and away from the needs of
consumers."

They softened that line a bit by the time they got around to pitching
their business to venture capitalists, allowing that selling ads would
be a handy safety net if their other, less distasteful ideas for
generating revenue didn't pan out.

Google soared in popularity in its first years but had no meaningful
revenue until the founders reluctantly fell on that safety net and
started selling ads. Even then, they approached advertising with the
mind-set of engineers: Ads would look more like fortune cookies than
anything Madison Avenue would come up with.

As it turned out, the safety net was a trampoline. Those little ads -- 
12 word snippets of text, linked to topics that users are actually 
interested in -- have turned Google into one of the biggest 
advertising vehicles the world has ever seen. This year, Google will 
sell $6.1 billion in ads, nearly double what it sold last year, 
according to Anthony Noto, an analyst at Goldman Sachs. That is more 
advertising than is sold by any newspaper chain, magazine publisher 
or television network. By next year, Mr. Noto said, he expects Google 
to have advertising revenue of $9.5 billion. That would place it 
fourth among American media companies in total ad sales after Viacom, 
the News Corporation and the Walt Disney Company, but ahead of giants 
including NBC Universal and Time Warner.

Not content to just suck advertising dollars from Web search, Google
is using its windfall to pay for an eclectic range of ambitious
projects that have the potential to radically disrupt other
industries. Among other things, it is offering to build a free
wireless Internet network in San Francisco, plans to scan nearly every
book published and is testing a free classified advertising system it
calls Google Base.

More quietly, Google is also preparing to disrupt the advertising 
business itself, by replacing creative salesmanship with cold 
number-crunching. Its premise so far is that advertising is most 
effective when seen only by people who are interested in what's for 
sale, based on what they are searching for or reading about on the 
Web. Because Google's ad-buying clients pay for ads only when users 
click on them, they can precisely measure their effectiveness -- and 
are willing to pay more for ads that really sell their products.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/30/business/yourmoney/30google.html?ex=1288324800&en=b0684c6ec54b2467&ei=5090

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 30 Oct 2005 01:52:58 -0400
From: William Warren <william_warren_nonoise@speakeasy.net>
Subject: Are There Prepaid Cellular Plans That Use Existing Phones?


I have a Motorola 120C cell phone, which I was keeping as a spare for
my regular cell calls on Verizon. However, Verizon won't allow the
120C on its network anymore, since it isn't E911 compliant. Although
I'm able to keep my current phone going, they won't allow me to
activate a different one if my present one fails, so I'd like to put
the spare to good use.

As it happens, my oldest son is going off to school in another state,
and the school told me that prepaid cellular plans are a good way to
limit costs. I'd like to use the 120C phone, and avoid having to buy a
new one, since I already have the phone and all the accessories for
it.

Are there any prepaid cellular plans that will activate a Motorola 120C?

TIA.

William Warren

(Filter noise from my address for direct replies)

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2005 23:16:09 -0700
From: David Josephson <dlj@bach.altaphon.com>
Subject: WU History


Replying to a post from Lisa Minter, hancock4 wrote (in part)

>> "Although the number of leased wires has not been reduced in absolute
>> terms, today their proportion has decreased to about 60%. S. M. Barr,
>> Western Union vice-president in charge of planning, expects this
>> percentage to drop to 40% in the next few years, hopes to get the
>> proportion of leased facilities down to 20% eventually."

> Did they get the reduction they forecast? The expense of leased lines
> was a big problem for Western Union in the 1970s. I heard they were
> mostly dependent on AT&T even then.

And it became a real bear of a problem (among others) in the 80's
before and after the Bell breakup. They were in essence a CLEC before
Judge Green made it feasible for CLECs to exist.

>> -Private Expansion- But it does expect its private wire services to
>> expand greatly. Here, particularly, Western Union's new facilities
>> will be of help in solving communications problems for private
>> customers. Western Union already has a good deal of savvy when it
>> comes to tailoring a special system to a customer's needs. Abou
>> 2,000 companies in the U.S. -- among them U.S. Steel, General
>> Electric, Sylvania, and United Air Lines -- have private
>> communications networks leased from Western Union. And its bank wire
>> service interconnects 213 banks in 55 cities with pushbutton
>> switching.

> So, did this service -- where the money is -- expand or contract in
> the 1960s? Obviously eventually it contracted. Why?

Did it really? That service remains today, Western Union Financial
Services was the only profitable piece of the company and was sold to
First Financial of Atlanta in 1994 for about $1.2 billion. (The
present owner, First Data, merged with First Financial the next year
in a deal worth $7 billion).

<snip>

>> -Government Contracts- Part of the load the new microwave system will
>> carry is already under contract. The U.S. Air Force hired Western
>> Union to build an automatic system of data and message handling that
>> will interconnect all domestic Air Force bases. The combat and
>> logistics network (COMLOGNET) [1] also costs, coincidentally, $56-
>> million and will be operated by Air Force personnel. Western Union
>> also built for the Air Force an international automatic switching
>> telegraph network, [2] which was completed last May, and has put in a
>> high-speed weather map facsimile system for the Strategic Air Command.
>> In addition, it built a nationwide weather map facsimile system for
>> the Weather Bureau that serves several hundred points.

> Again, this is good business. What happened to the government
> contracts?

My guess, from looking at one of these contracts for the installation
and operation of a private analog telemetry circuit for the Air Force,
is that WU didn't understand how to make money on private
networks. They were careful to charge a lot up front, and actually
sold the terminal and enroute microwave equipment to the government as
part of the deal. This particular circuit was to be shut down this
year (2005) but I believe is still in operation, with no provision for
replacing the equipment, some of which is the original gear from the
mid 1960's. If this contract is indicative of their business acumen,
it's no wonder that it was hard for them to stay afloat.

There is an interesting history at http://www.westernunionalumni.com ...


David Josephson

------------------------------

From: Tim@Backhome.org
Subject: Re: Los Angeles Numbering, 1940s
Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2005 16:43:40 -0700
Organization: Cox Communications



Paul Coxwell wrote:

> Phone numbers were used several times, which I am assuming were of the
> 2L-4N format -- They were given as name plus four digits and I believe
> from previous discussions here that Los Angeles never used 3L-4N
> numbering.

I don't know about previous discussion here, but Los Angeles indeed
progressed from 2L-4N to 3L-4N.

Downtown Los Angeles, for example, was the MAdison Exchange.  I remember
lots of very public numbers in that exchange that were MA 1234 (for
example) then became MA 5 1234, and so forth.

Same for HOllywood.

------------------------------

From: BobT <fake@invalid.net>
Subject: Re: Old Chicago Numbering
Organization: EasyNews, UseNet made Easy!
Date: Sun, 30 Oct 2005 14:25:35 GMT


On Sat, 29 Oct 2005 13:22:09 +0100, TELECOM Digest Editor noted in
response to Paul Coxwell <paulcoxwell@tiscali.co.uk>:


> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The 'Wabash CannonBall' a/k/a Wabash

.....

> and of course, Uptown Station, the very elegant train stop which
> served the Chicago, North Shore and Milwaukee Electric Railroad, one
> of Samuel Insull's properties which was located at Wilson Street and
> Broadway, in the heart of beautiful Uptown, a shopping district only
> second in glamor to 63rd Street and Ashland. Its all gone today.

[many snips]

Pat -- Not telecom related, but just FYI.  I'm a long time south sider
(since 1948).  I think you will find the major shopping area along
63rd was at Halsted.  63rd at Ashland, and from Cottage Grove to
Woodlawn, were secondary.


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I think you are probably correct,
except that on east 63rd Street, it ran from Cottage Grove to
Stony Island Avenue. It didn't stop at Woodlawn. All those stores,
at least on the east end of 63rd Street are long gone now; many 
blocks through there are totally empty, just weeds growing. Where
there had been a Walgreen's store (63rd and Woodlawn as I recall?) 
is now just a vacant lot littered with debris. I guess the Sears,
Roebuck store over on the west end of 63rd is long gone also. I know
that Englewood Hospital filed bankrupcty and closed down completely,
and I think Woodlawn Hospital is also gone. The Illinois Central
Hospital [originally, it was the medical department for the railroad's
Chicago area operations] went 'public' for several years in the 
1960-70's but I am told it bit the dust also. Hyde Park High School is
around -- barely -- but whatever happened to Englewood High School
further west?  Englewood and Hyde Park (high schools) used to be rated
in the top ten high schools in Chicago, sixty years ago, both with
very excellent music study programs and college prep programs.

I know that after Chicago Transit Authority deliberatly allowed its
property (the Dorchester Bridge over 63rd and Dorchester) to
deteriorate so badly that they had an excuse to completely abandon the
Jackson Park Elevated Railroad (the Jackson Park 'L' dated to the
1890's World Fair [Columbian Exposition at the site of the present day
Museum of Science and Industry]) that was pretty much the end of
things for all the merchants on the east end. I guess CTA still
operates the 'L' trains on the west end of 63rd Street (what I always
knew as Englewood) or have they abandoned that section of their 
system also when it got to be too deteriorated to use safely?   

I cannot recall (if I ever knew that much) about the phone exchanges
on the Englewood portion of 63rd Street; the only ones I can remember
for sure were ENGlewood (773-364) for whom the central office was
named, TRIangle (773-874) and NORmal (773-667). Both the hospital and
the high school by that name had ENGlewood phone numbers. The Chicago
Normal School (sort of like a college) was the rationale for that
name, and all I know about TRIangle is the old Englewood Fire Alarm
Office took alarm calls on TRIangle-4-0002.  That was sort of odd;
in the old days of POLice-5-1313 and FIRe-7-1313, where calls to
police went to each central office and there were translated into
(various)-1313 and sent on to the police headquarters downtown, calls
to FIRe-7-1313 were translated in each central office as follows:
telephone exchanges (and callers) north of 39th Street (in other
words, all the north side and about half the south side) were 
translated into DEArborn-2-1313 and sent to the City Hall Fire Alarm
Office in City Hall. Exchanges and callers south of 39th Street were
sent to the Englewood Fire Alarm Office on TRIangle-4-0002. I am
not really sure how they handled that. 

Oh, and the CTA had (still has?)  a converted horse barn (125 years
ago, the CTA predecessor companies used horses to pull carriages
around town; they housed the animals in the barn at 77th and Vincennes
Avenue); at 77th and Vincennes, their 'counting room' is located there
in addition to parking a few hundred busses there all night. Several
years ago, when CTA came up several million dollars short and traced it
back to employee thievery, several of the 'counting room' cashiers got
the axe when the worker's union permitted CTA to fire them. Those folks
also had a TRIangle phone number, quite similar to the phones at the
Merchandise Mart HQ offices of CTA; MOHawk-4-7200 and TRIangle-4-7200
I think. PAT]    

------------------------------

Subject: Re: Old Chicago Numbering
Date: Sun, 30 Oct 2005 14:21:21 CST
From: jsw@ivgate.omahug.org
Reply-To: jsw@ivgate.omahug.org


> I've been having a discussion with a friend in Chicago about the
> numbering employed there in the past.

I'm not from Chicago, but I've visited there ever since I was very
young, having relatives in the Rogers Park, Evanston, Skokie area.

Beginning in my teens when I started being fascinated by things like
phones, on trips there, I would 'study' the phones and yes, dork around
a bit with relatives phones when they were not looking.  ;-)

I always remember the Chicago area as having 7 digit dialing in the 60's
and 70's, and I never remember any manual offices in that era either,
although they may have just been retired, as they were in other metro
areas around that time.

The relatives and friends (as well as advertisements) seemed to use a
fusion of the FNord-6-1234 nomenclature and the 366-1234 nomenclature,
but I don't remember anybody referring to numbers using the three letter
FNOrd-1234 syntax.

I remember (the) Chicago (area) as being almost entirely Panel, 1Xbar,
5Xbar, with a sprinkling of 1ESS starting to appear in the early 70's.

The only true SxS I 'found' were in one area served by some
independent telco (north and west of Chicago, but still AC312 then
with 7 digit dialing to and from Chicago), some various DID/PBX
installations in the downtown area and scattered all around, actually,
and some CDO type offices on the south fringe of the dialing area.

> Also mentioned was the Edgewater office on the north side of Chicago
> where he worked mid-1960s. From his description is sounds like it was a
> panel office at that time, or "monkey-on-a-stick" as he says they
> referred to it!

I remember a lot of Panel in Chicago proper and on the north side.  In
the early 70's, SHeldrake3 (SH7, maybe, it was SH-something) (Rogers
Park) was most definitely an aging Panel switch.  In Evanston, 744
(74-something ???) was also definitely Panel and 866 was definitely a
5Xb.

> We also got to talking about Strowger SxS switches: I would imagine
> local central offices for Illinois Bell might have used SXS at some
> point

Very seldom did Ma Bell use SxS for large metropolitan installations.
They seemed to prefer remaining with manual service until they could
install 'machine switching' using Panel or later 1Xb.

As a timeline, if it was a dial office prior to 1921, it most
definitely was not Panel, and Ma Bell was mostly manual prior to the
20's.  I submitted an item to Telecom Digest years ago about the first
full-scale metropolitan Panel installtation, which was in
Omaha. Paterson, NJ was the second, IIRC. From what I can tell, the
1920's is when Ma Bell started widely deploying 'machine switching'
dial service in its major metro areas.

Another timeline point, if it was installed prior to 1938, it was not
1Xb (or Xbar of any type) and was most likely Panel for Ma Bell and
SxS for independents.  1Xb was installed in Brooklyn for its shakedown
run and was deployed widely in other metropolitan Ma Bell areas after
World War II.

I don't have an exact date for the first 5Xb installations, but my
guess is that they appeared in the early or mid 1950's.  I do know of
a case in Omaha where a 1Xb expansion (Fowler office) and a new 5Xb
installation (90th St. office) occurred at roughly the same time.

> Although Edgewater dates back almost to the earliest of times as well,
> and is in the Uptown neighborhood, for whatever reason it mostly
> progressed over the years from panel through step by step to crossbar,
> and when it was 'cut' fairly early on (memory tells me it was 1976-77)

I very seriously doubt if any fully-deployed 10,000 line Chicago Panel
offices were entirely cut to SxS prior to going Xbar or ESS.

Ma Bell (sorry, old habit) had 'standard builds' for large metro
offices and seemed to follow them quite consistently over the years.
Their upgrades seemed to follow these patterns:

Panel -> 5Xb
Panel -> ESS
1Xb -> ESS
5Xb -> ESS

and, of course,

SxS -> ESS  (mostly CDO, PBX, etc.)

We won't even talk about the 101ESS. <big snotty grin>

I've seen a number of Panel to 5Xb cuts and countless (anything) to
ESS cuts in the 1970's, but I can't remember anything (other than
manual) ever getting cut TO step, as I'm also having a hard time
recalling any full 10,000 line SxS offices in any of Ma Bell's
territory.

(As an aside, Las Vegas was indeed totally SxS in the early 70's, with
several fully-loaded offices, but this was not Ma Bell.  For some
reason Rochester comes to mind as having SxS as well, but again, not
Ma.)

> one exchange there stood out like a sore thumb. ... LOngbeach-1.
> Everyone got 911 service except the subscribers with Longbeach
> numbers

{snip}

>_they_ had to dial '0' operator and ask for the long distance numbers
> they wanted.

My guess is that this was an aging Panel office which they did not want
to upgrade for these services since it was to be converted to ESS in the
near future.

In NYC, I remember 0-plus dialing (it was called 'Extended DDD' back
then) in 1968 or so. Yes, quite a few Panel offices had it, but some
Panel offices did not get EDDD or Touch Tone<tm> until they were
upgraded to ESS, some as late as the late 70's.

> Longbeach also had _no_ payhones in it; <br> and the 9xxx series of
> numbers were given to 'regular subscribers'

The assignment of payphone numbers seems to be consistently
inconsistent, and I've always been fascinated with it.  In Chicago I
seem to recall it was almost always the 9xxx series numbers that were
on coin lines, even though there were a lot of 9xxx for subscribers as
well.  In NYC, most payphones of the era were 9xxx, but there were
some 9xxx sprinkled around as well.  Some 9xxx were assigned to
regular subscribers.  I seem to recall that each physical CO building
would have one or two prefixes which carried all of the coin lines for
that area, and others would have none.

The strangest Ma Bell payphone numbering I ever remember was in Cape
Cod where some payphones had 5xxx numbers.


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I do not think Chicago ever had any
2L-4D-1L combinations. Anything which looked like that was some sort
of customer attempt at putting their number on the dial plate. 

And yes, LOngbeach-1 _was_ a very old, very antiquated arrangement. I
am sure what you said about telco not wanting to spend money just for
a few months makes sense. That was the case in the WABash central
office downtown its final few months. I was talking to Miss Prissy my
service rep one day after I had made several unsuccessful attempts to
reach a certain number; i.e. connection was extremely noisy, slow to
set up, and often as not the noisy switch train would derail itself
and jump off the track to nowhere in the process of setting up. I
asked Miss Prissy, are 'they' doing any sort of routine maintainence
in the CO these days, or since ESS is just a month or two away are
they allowing all the old stuff to just go to hell to save the expense
of maintainence?  Miss Prissy was quite indignant; you'd have thought
I had blessed her out personally -- "oh yes, Mr. Townson, our
dedicated workers do work all the time. I will note your complaint and
ask them to check into the problem."  I did not tell Miss Prissy, but
at that point in time I lived in Rogers Park (on SHEldrake-3 no less)
and my neighbor was Charles Brown, then the president of Illinois Bell.
Mr. Brown did tell me that the company was trying to 'hold the line'
on maintainence as needed on the old stuff.  

A couple other quick comments: the 'independent telco' on the northwest 
side of town was Central Telephone Company of Park Ridge. It later
took the name 'Centel' and now it is something else. It _still_ owns
and operates VAnderbilt out of Des Plaines (now 847-825 I think?) and
a couple of Chicago prefixes also known as 'Chicago Newcastle'. It
publishes its own telephone directory (Chicago Newcastle) but is also
included in the IBT/Ameritech/SBC Chicago directory as well. 

Regards payphones and 9xxx, that was always the case in Chicago, but 
downtown, which was 'payphone topheavy' in the pre-cellular phone
days, when acceptable '9xxx' numbers were all used, then they
continued by using '88xx' and '89xx' as well.  PAT]

------------------------------


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