Re: Foreign Exchange (FX) Lines Still in Use?

>> In another thread Pat mentioned FX lines. As mentioned, these were
>> used to save on long distance changes -- customers would make a local >> call to a distant business and the business could call its customers >> for the cost of a local call. This service was not cheap. >> At a resort I visited that had FX lines to a city 75 miles away, the >> switchboard had special heavy cord pairs. Extensions authorized for >> FX had a second jack underneath in which the heavy cord was inserted. >> I heard FX lines used higher voltage thus the heavy cords. I don't >> know what kind of special wiring, if any, was in the telephone sets. >> I would guess WATS and long distance packages has made most FX lines >> obsolete. > The proverbial "yes and no". > I seriously looked at FX for my residence a couple of times within the > last 10 years or so.

nWhen I was living in the Marieville section of North Providence, RI I got tagged with a Pawtucket (722 to 729) rate center phone number while just a block away, there were Providence (353 and 354) rate center numbers.

The install of the FX was about $85 and the monthly service < $40 but it was worth it as I had many friends in the Warwick/EG area and my tolls were getting insane.

When I moved two block over I had a Providence rate center number again. So as a "screw you" to then New England Telephone, I had call forwarding set up on the line.

You see, folks in the Pawtucket rate center could call my Providence rate center number.

I could call the Warwick and EG rate centers without toll. You see where I'm going here.

Friend of mine had a major BBS set up in East Greenwich but northern RI users paid tolls to access. What we found out about call forwarding was that the call forwarded and then released the line for other calls. In addition, it would forward even while I was using it.

He split the cost of the line with me for that little service.

[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: A memory on this topic ... in the Chicago area, Harlem Avenue and Irving Park Road is the dividing line between part of Chicago proper and various western suburbs. When area 312 was split many years ago with part of it going into a new code 708, there were many customers along Harlem Avenue (on the west side of the street; the suburban side) who had inadvertently earlier gotten assigned a 'Chicago' prefix instead of a 'suburban' prefix. (All the prefixes around that area work out of the Chicago-Newcastle central office regardless of geographic location; once '708' as an area code got started, telco just did programming in the central office.) But the end result was the a few people on the Chicago (eastern) side of Harlem wound up with a 708 number and some on the suburban (western) side of Harlem wound up with a 312 number. It has been several years now, of course, but I seem to remember a restaurant on the Chicago side with its natural 312 business number, but the parking lot in front of it had one payphone with a 708 number. At that time (of the 708 split from 312) a lot of business people around Harlem/Irving were very unhappy about split; even more so when it was discovered a bit later that 'here and there' their neighbor across the street had an incorrectly assigned phone number from long before in the past. PAT]