Repeating for the illiterate:
> 'native' touch-tone operation was substantially cheaper for the telco
> than was 'native' pulse dialing.
> They retrofitted dial-to-pulse conversion on SxS switches so that they
> could 'pre-convert' customers to touch-tone before the switch was
> converted to native touch-tone dialing.
> This was a "short-term" expenditure of money now, to maximize
> "long-term" benefits. By having a significant "installed base" of
> touch-tone users *already*in*place* when the C.O. was converted to
> _native_touch-tone_ handling, they could get by with far fewer sets of
> digit decoders (dial or pulse). With 'pulse' tieing up the decoders
> for average more than five times as long as touch-tone, there _was_
> significant benefit to be obtained. getting even 20% of the calls on
> touch-tone, meant a _halving_ of the number of decoder elements
> required.
What was the cost of the touch-tone oscillator for a telephone set, vs. the cost of a rotary dial? There were millions of telephone sets out there, and at the time that was introduced the phones were installed, owned and maintained by the telco. The cost of the oscillators (key pads) would be considerable expense, particularly if the cost was significantly higher than a rotary dial.
Wes Leatherock snipped-for-privacy@aol.com snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com