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PAT - DO NOT display my email address anywhere in this post! Thanks.
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Lisa Hancock <hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com> wrote:
> Joseph Singer <joeofseattle@yahoo.com>
>> AT&T was the only carrier that would place coin sent paid calls
>> inter-LATA. AT&T stopped handling sent paid inter-LATA calls
>> several years ago from CO controlled pay phones. Intra-LATA calls
>> (at least in Qwest territory) can still be made sent coin paid.
>> On the "Millennium" smart pay phones you can make sent paid
>> inter-LATA calls. AT&T evidently doesn't want to handle inter-LATA
>> calls if operators are involved at all.
> Well the Verizon pay phones in NYC offered coin long distance. Who
> is handling the cross LATA long distance calls? Who is asking for
> and controlling the coin deposit?
When was the last time you saw 1+ coin service from those Verizon coin
phones in New York City? AT&T Long Distance discontinued 1+ sent-paid
coin from traditional telco CO controlled payphones during 2002/03.
As Joe mentions, in Qwest (legacy US West, an RBOC) territory out
west, the Nortel manufactured "Millennium" smart "super" payphones,
with card swipes, touch-a-carrier buttons, LCD displays, etc. allow
sent-paid coin toll calls outside of the LATA, but these "smart" or
"super" payphones are NOT traditional CO controlled
payphones. Instead, they have smart-chips inside, similar to private
COCOT payphones.
Many RBOCs have been retro-fitting traditional "looking" payphones
originally made by AT&T's Western Electric, and many independent LECs
have been retro-fitting their traditional "looking" Automatic Electric
payphones and Northern Telecom traditional Centurian payphones, with
internal "smart-chips". Sometimes these phones act completely as a
private "COCOT" payphone. Other times, they can act as a "hybrid",
where local and telco-handled intra-LATA toll coin service is handled
more or less traditionally, by the telco central office controls as
well as the telco's Operator switch, usually a Nortel TOPS, sometimes
a Lucent OSPS, but then inter-LATA coin toll calls would be handled
strictly by the internal "smart" chips.
When internal "smart" chips handle the 1+ and maybe even 011+ IDDD
coin sent paid service, it really doesn't "matter" who the LD company
carrying that call happens to be. It could even be AT&T, but it isn't
being handled by AT&T through their Operator OSPS switches in the way
they used to prior to 2002/03. It is rather handled as any "standard
non-coin" 1+ call would be handled, only that the internal smart chips
quote, count, collect, etc. the coin deposits, just like a private
COCOT payphone would do.
And those VZ payphones in NYCity -- what are you defining as Long
Distance? If the call is multi-zone or intra-LATA toll, VZ could still
be handling those calls in the "traditional" sense, by the CO as well
as by their Operator TOPS switch, for coin-paid calls to Long Island
516 and 631, Westchester 914 and other upriver counties in 845, Byram
and Greenwich CT 203 which has been VZ/NYTel for decades, and even
"corridor" intra-LATA calls to VZ/NJBell for a handful of nearby
Jersey counties across the Hudson River.
The latter is similar to your southwestern New Jersey / southeastern
Pennsylvania corridor option that VZ Bell Atlantic (NJBell, Bell of
PA) has provided when AT&T and the BOCs were separated with the 1984
divestiture.
But for inter-LATA toll 1+ coin calls (outside of that limited NY/NJ
corridor), AT&T won't handle those types of long distance calls
anymore, at least not in the "traditional" 1+ coin way of doing
things. If VZ payphones can still be used to place such calls, then
it is being handled by some kind of internal COCOT-like "smart" chips,
regardless of who the actual LD carrier happens to be. And its also
possible that VZ had completely retrofitted their traditional
"looking" payphones to be completely operated as if it were a COCOT,
with internal "smart" chips, even for local, multi-zone, intra-LATA
toll, NY/NJ "corridor" coin calls, as well as inter-LATA and possibly
even 011+ international coin calls.
Incidentally, I think that a lot of foreign countries around the world
have had their payphones operate by internal "mechanical counters" for
decades. This would be a predecessor to the COCOT-like internal "smart
chips" that have been used in the US with COCOTs since the early and
mid-1980s, and even in Canada with Nortel "Millennium" super
payphones, and also Canadian COCOTs since the late-1990s. I don't
think that most "other" countries ever really had true CO controlled
payphones in the way the US and Canada had known them. And even in the
US and Canada, telcos in smaller towns and rural areas used to have
"post-pay" coin service even in recent years as well!
Anthony Bellanga (anthonybellanga@gonestraighttohell.com)