In article
See John Levine's story about "party line attack ladies", Jun 20 1989, in Telecom Digest Vol 9 Issue 207.
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Not a bad idea, I suppose. Although I do not like repeating myself, now and again it is a good idea to re-run earlier items for the benefit of people who may have missed the item the first time around, which I guess would include many of you who were not here to read this item from 18 years ago. PAT]Date: Thu, 22 Jun 89 0:58:57 CDT From: TELECOM Moderator To: snipped-for-privacy@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V9 #207 Message-ID:
TELECOM Digest Thu, 22 Jun 89 00:45:22 CDT Volume 9 : Issue 207
Today's Topics: Moderator: Patrick Townson
Party Line Attack Ladies (John R. Levine) Overseas Collect Calls (Jeff Minnig) Automatic Conversation Recording Device (Gary L. Crum) British Telecom's `Le Beep' Service (Peter T.) Re: Long Distance Carrier Sound Comparisons (John Higdon) Re: Is Touchtone Still a Protected Trademark? (Dr. T. Andrews) Re: Pacific Bell plans access to computers (Robert Cohen) What Is 10288? - Question from new reader (Don Peaslee) ----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 89 20:13:34 EDT From: "John R. Levine" Subject: Party Line Attack Ladies Reply-To: "John R. Levine" Organization: Segue Software, Inc.
While talking to my cousin who runs an independent telco in rural Vermont, he introduced me to Party Line Attack Ladies, an aspect of telephone practice not heretofore described here.
In Vermont, the cheapest service you can order is four-party, and many of my cousin's customers do order it. Traditionally, a four-party line consisted of a single loop of wire running to a neighborhood with four houses in that neighborhood wired in parallel. Nowadays, though, the outside plant wiring is in most cases private line, i.e. each customer has a separate physical loop back to the exchange. To make up the party lines, he ties four loops together at the CO. This has a variety of advantages for him -- nearly all of his four-party customers do in fact have four parties on the line so they're not getting better service than they're paying for, and it's much easier to diagnose line problems, change peoples' service, and rearrange the four-line groupings as needed.
It also means that his costs for four-party and private line service are the same even though the rates for private lines are higher (four-party probably costs him slightly more since an operator has to ask for the caller's number for toll calls.) He'd naturally rather have people order and pay for private lines. So he takes advantage of Attack Ladies, local ladies who make extensive use of their party line phones and have strong opinions about people who want them to get off the line to make their own calls. One per line is all that's required. When a customer decides to go private, the modern exchange equipment allows my cousin to put another client on to the same line with the Attack Lady without needing to rewire or change phone numbers.
He assures me that this is standard practice in the independent phone business. I don't doubt it. He'd prefer that the state get rid of four-party service and implement some sort of low-use minimum cost private line service instead.
John R. Levine, Segue Software, POB 349, Cambridge MA 02238, +1 617 492 3869 { bbn | spdcc | decvax | harvard | yale }!ima!johnl, snipped-for-privacy@YALE.something Massachusetts has 64 licensed drivers who are over 100 years old. -The Globe
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[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: So there you have an interesting report from 18 years ago in this digest. John Levine has been around for many, many years on this digest mailing list. PAT]