History -- introduction of Touch Tone in Independent Companies? [telecom]

Perhaps I'm not aware of a key technical point that makes this harder than it seems.>>

You also have to consider that the Bell System policy was to make their consumer sets as uniformly consistent that it would be easier to just take one set out and replace it with another. If there was a difference between equipment that you installed on customer premises that was different in Madawaska, Maine vs. what was installed in the TRafalgar office in New York City you'd have to keep more and different equipment on hand. Two sets of equipment one for big cities and one for rural. I'm sure the Bell System didn't want to keep two separate inventories of equipment when one would do.

The GTE territory I lived in at the time (Glendora, CA) began offering "Touch Calling" in 1971 on our local SxS. And, indeed, Automatic Electric was manufacturing Touch Calling residential and business key system sets by that time.

In case you forget, in 1971 you had to have your instruments changed out by TPC (the phone company) if you switched from dial pulse to DTMF subscriber service. (Other- wise, Ernestine would send her guy out to your house.)

Sorry 'bout that: I'm working on an automagic line-wrapping tool, and it needs more work.

I'm on the street again, so most of my time is spent hustling work right now: please wrap lines at a reasonable length and save me the trouble.

Bill

The ergonomics of those small AE buttons were terrible.

I travel through former GTE territory on a regular basis. Where I can still find LEC pay stations Verizon seems to have gotten rid of most of those small button pay stations.

A notable exception was in a remote High Sierra town (June Lake, CA) last week where the Verizon (previously, GTE, and before that Contel) pay station still had those little buttons. Interestingly, the station enclosure had been replaced with one featuring the looks-like-the-Bell-System bell logo.)

One one side of the enclosure you will see Verizon, the other side has the bell logo. You will see this in none Verizon areas also; in front of 7-11, CVS Albertsons, Vons/Safeway and a couple of other stores, they have a contract with them. I thought Verizon sold off June Lake and a few other former Contel areas up there?

Well, that's not quite correct. Yes, they wanted consistency, but the Bell System was very large and they did have to accomodate differences.

For instance, some pay phones were pre-pay, some were post-pay. Also, they maintained stocks of non-dial phones for areas with manual service and certain PBX extensions (such as in a plain motel.)

Indeed, the Bell System offered a variety of specialty 500 set variants, such as with a little dial light, two-line button, four line button, six line button, volume amplifier, message-waiting lamp.

The basic 500 set was the "C/D" model, but I understand there were other codes as well (don't know what they were for or what the C/D meant).

In any event, the 20 pps dial need not require a separate inventory, it was apparently a simple change that could be done in the field, no different than modifying a telephone set to work off of one of the common four-party line types offered in city offices (where only the desired phone rang when called via bias and grounding combinations.) [Independents used frequency ringers.]

Remember, there were many smaller Independent companies besides GTE (General Telephone & Electronics). But many of them bought their equipment from the GTE manfuacturer, Automatic Electric Company. So, you could find those tiny button pay phones in a great many places. Turnpike rest stops, often served by an Independent in a rural area, had them, probably still do.

As an aside, while Verizon bought out GTE, it stil refers to GTE territories separately. Infrastructure can take years to change. I suspect there are plenty of AE designed-built ESS in service that aren't going anywhere.

Further, the Independents traded service territories among themselves. There was an effort in the 1970s to swap exchanges so that one carrier would have a contiguous area, which was more efficient to serve.

The AE basic telephone set, the model 80, looked very similar to the Bell model 500, except the dial finger stop was lower on the circle, and the dial was quieter.

Could anyone describe what the basic AE Touch Tone set looked like? They marketed it as "Touch Calling" ("Touch Tone" was the Bell System official name.)

Still Verizon.

I double checked on the Verizon wireline site by entering a bogus June Lake address and it returned "service available."

I suspect the only way Verizon could sell off June Lake would be to sell off the entire Contel Eastern Sierra/Owens Valley/ Ridgecrest (and Victorville) areas. The rural character of the Eastern Sierra areas alone has to be a money loser.

The possible exception would be Mammoth Lakes, and its DMS-100 hosts June Lake's remote.

Victorville and the valley around it are no more money losers then any other areas, there is still growth up there, maybe not as much as a year or so ago. I was up in the area right after GTE bought it, we went up there to look at the co's since my manager was going to be over that area. For a while it worked as a separate operating area as did the former California Water Telephone areas did years ago. I have not been up to the June Lake area in years, I traveled to Weaverville and a couple of towns in that area, it was really nice but very remote.

The Only Good Spammer is a Dead one!! Have you hunted one down today? (c) 2008 I Kill Spammers, Inc. A Rot In Hell Co.

That's what I intended to convey. With Ridgecrest and the Victorville area as part of the package then the Eastern Sierria and Owens Valley might be viable.

Through the magic of the Universal Service Fund, no place is a money loser. Assuming those places could be made eligible for USF, they could be a gold mine for a small telco. Look at Beehive Tel in Nevada and Utah for a famous example of very rural very high cost service with lots of USF money.

snipped-for-privacy@bbs.cpcn.com wrote in news:9209dd99-eba2-4ca6-8d9b-f91119ab2bd9 @m44g2000hsc.googlegroups.com:

Steve

The former GTE areas of Vz are commonly referred to as Verizon-West, or fGTE, while the former Bell Atlantic is known as; Verizon-East, fBA.

snipped-for-privacy@bbs.cpcn.com wrote in news:57bcd12e-d17e-4a54-8dd0-f91169dc3e28 @m36g2000hse.googlegroups.com:

Hancock aka: Steve nor Lisa

I have noticed in both this forum, and another (NYC Transit), I find your posts/questions raised most stimulating within the subject area of that particular Newsgroup.

However I can't help but ask if the majority of your subject posts are intended to both stimulate a "conversation" among like minded individual, and to collect information to build a database of information for purposes of research, or publication?

Sorry for how this posting may appear, but I had to ask!!!

Bill

Bill:

If you are using a company e-mail address be careful what you say, some years ago before I retired from GTE, I posted something and started a firestorm within GTE California, I was defended by my managers but Public Affairs went crazy, from that point on I used my own account.

AE telephone sets were very similar to the WECO design only slightly different so they wouldn't infringe on the WECO designs. Like the similarity between the model 80 for Automatic Electric and the WECO model 500 the model 80E was similar to the WECO model 2500. Sets for the same era were "copied" by lots of different manufacturers. Telephone sets used in the UK the "706" have a 500 feel to them as well. The Telrad sets used in Israel have the same rounded feel as the WECO 500.

See:

for 1975 - 1986

As late as 1993, my mother had a pulse-only line in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, which could not have touch-tone without changing the phone number (717-697). You had to be careful about terminology, because she DID have a "push-button phone" (which was set to pulse dial), and she didn't know about the technical stuff.

Eventually she did change the phone number, possibly because she moved into a nursing home (also in Mechanicsburg) and the internal phone system there didn't handle non-touch-tone lines, although she did have the original number ringing at her room in the nursing home for a couple of years. As her condition changed, they moved her around, and the phone number followed her until it eventually changed, which might have coincided with her moving into a new building.

I'm not sure what phone company handled her line, although I thought it was Pennsylvania Bell.

Yes. It is interesting to read different opinions, including those opposite of mine, as well as the diverse experiences people have had being employed by an organization or a user of such services. [I am curious about the old style internal telephone network of the NYC subway system--was it Bell or owned by the subway, as well as the system in use before subway Unification.]

or hard copy publication, and these are always gratefully appreciated.

No. Most of the comments on Usenet represent merely the opinion of the writer and aren't quite appropriate for use in research.

----- Original Message ----

It probably wasn't Bell of PA, There were a bunch of independent Telcos in central PA and they delighted in charging exorbitant intrastate LD charges between companies. If you had Bell of PA, you could call Philadelphia or Pittsburgh for a fraction of calling the next town over :-(

Mark L. Smith

Companies? [telecom]

Back then rates were regulated, so what they charged was based on what it costs them in interconnect charges with other companies.