TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Re: Old Party-Line Arrangements

Re: Old Party-Line Arrangements

Wesrock@aol.com
Sat, 12 Feb 2005 19:59:19 EST

In a message dated Fri, 11 Feb 2005 16:08:05 -0500, William Warren <
william_warren_nonoise@comcast.net> writes:

> On the #5XB, a phone was wired in two separate steps: one for incoming
> calls, and a separate connection for outgoing. This was done because a
> lot of businesses choose to have all their toll usage lumped on one
> bill, or wanted to have a single billing number for a specific
> workgroup, etc., so that the "incoming" wiring was done at the Number
> Group, and the "outgoing" at the Translator.

> Someone miswired the Translator.

With all due respect, the identification came from an identification
wire which was threaded through a "Number Network" frame with oval
openings corresponding to the digits of the number and surrounded by
coils which could detect a spurt of tone on the idenficiation lead.
This spurt was sent when a caller accessed the DDD equipment.

An object lesson given to planners for later 5XB/DDD cutover committee
involved a jumper that was misrouted in the Enid, Oklahoma, office its
cutover to 5XB/DDD/AMA (previously it had been manual common battery).

A jewelry store which sold small appliances and a lumber yard which
sold large appliances were frequently in dispute over their toll
billing.

The problem was compounded by the fact that both called the same
General Electric appliance distribution warehouse in a suburb of
Kansas City to place orders or for other dealings. Neither one of
them could deny they made calls to this number, since they both did,
but not necessarily at the times the were billed for.

This went on for months. A craftsman investigating the problem for
the umpteenth time ran the identification jumpers and found the jumper
for one of the business's second line was miswired to one of the other
business's numbers. (The numbers at one point differed by only one
digit. Since it was only on the second line, the occasions of
misbilling appeared to be random.

A caution to switchmen to verify every jumped before cutover to make
sure that they or the W.E. installers had each one wired correctly.

Incidentally, group billing takes place in the accounting office, not
in the C.O., so each line is wired to its correct line number, not
kludged in the C.O.

Wes Leatherock
wesrock@aol.com

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