Farewell to the 1A ESS [telecom]

Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: RIP 1AESS Organization: NRK Clinic for habitual NetNews Abusers - Beltway Annex

Seen:

In the early hours of June 3, 2017 an era ended at AT&T with the retirement of the last 1AESS switch in service. The 1AESS switch at the Lincoln Central Office in Odessa, TX was converted to a new G6/G5 switch. The Lincoln switch was put in service February 25, 1979. It saw over thirty-eight years of call processing service. The final conversion was a flawless success the switch had service turned down on Friday, June 3, 2017.

"This is truly the end of an era for AT&T. Decades ago the 1AESS switch was a workhorse for our network services and for more than 50 years took our services to a new level. Many of our team members have spent their career maintaining it," said Bill Huber, SVP Technical Field Services.

Western Electric's #1ESS switching system was designed for areas where large numbers of lines and lines with heavy traffic are served. It generally serves between 10,000 and 65,000 lines. The final 1AESS replacement program began January 30, 2010. During that time 56 1AESS were retired and 707,328 wired lines were migrated. Thanks to the noteworthy combined efforts of many organizations within AT&T and partner contractors, this project was a true testament to exceptional leadership and extraordinary focus. Thank you to all who were a part of this great accomplishment.

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Comments: An amateur radio friend had been detailed from Ohio Bell Telephone (OBT) Transmission Engineering to NJ in the 1960's to inject hands-on telco experience into the design team; from his stories it was badly needed.

I thought all the 1A's were long gone domestically, as they didn't support Equal Access well. I recall that Telcom Digest greybeard Al Varney mentioned that post-retirement he'd gotten a part-time job on

1A support; I believe for Latin America.
Reply to
David Lesher
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