In the late 70's until the 1984 break up I worked at the NY7P AT&T Private Line office located at 811 Tenth Avenue, Manhattan. N7 PL was a conventional private line office that provided both switched and non- switched voice, as well as voiceband data. Digital Data (DDS) was offered by the NY7D DDS office on the eighth floor. I was slated to work at the CCSA#5 office in 1979, but at the last minute I was swapped with a guy that was a former WECo installer that had been laid off in 1974. CCSA#5 at the time was only a few lines drawn on the CO floor that signified where the equipment frames were to have been placed. The feeling was that the former WECo employee would give added benefit to the new office since he had worked on some 1ESS installations in the past. In the long run that swap did me a great favour, because I may have never ended up at NYT, and survive to see thirty years of service. Compared to my former AT&T coleages who saw many lay offs at AT&T beginning in the 1990's. There were two CCSA offices operating at the time CCSA#4 & CCSA#5. Both CCSA offices were equipped with four wire #1A ESS switches that carried private switched voice services under what was know as Feature pacgake 14 (FP14) services. As compared to FP12 which was limited to PBX/Centrex to PBX/Centrex inter-tandem tie trunk groups. CCSA #6 was also a #1A ESS that went in on the third floor over the mobile telephone garage area of the building, adjacent to where 5450T, a #4ESS , was later installed to replace the NY7 #4XB (Card reader), and latter NY6, a #4XB ETS. Both NY6 & NY7 were retired and were ripped out by late 1983.
The #1A ESS machines were predated by #5XB's that had been already been retired and were being removed about the time I started working at NY7P. Interesting fact. In the early 1970's the old NY7 wideband data group, which eventually became the DDS group, was responsible for maintenance operations of the CCSA #5XB equipment. In fact the old CCSA 17B boards survived past divestiture and bacme the property of NY Telephone when the NY7 DDS HUB was transferred to NYT as a result of divestiture. The test boards were not in voice operation, but functioned on a limited capacity to support some DDS related traffic in the NY7D office on the 8th floor.
One story from an old friend of mine, who works as a carrier technician at the nearby Verizon W50 Street CO, mentioned that some one in the Wideband /CCSA office had once amended a recorded announcement on a GE network that included the following at the end of the network voice announcment; "and you can be shure if it's Westinghouse." Needless to say, the appended message on the GE CCSA network did not last very long.
Many of AT&T's CCSA customers in the mid 1980's used non-AT&T LD connecting facilities (MCI, SBS, US Transmission Systems) between CCSA offices. AT&T would supply a 2600Hz SF signaling unit at each AT&T end, and then connect strictly at the VF to the OCC carrier taking the trunk circuit to a far end city location. Most Off Net Access Lines (ONAL's) were local (POTS) ground start trunks. In some instances, the serving CCSA office might provide a loop start FX like connection to a telephone set, typically a key system, where users may not have had a local PBX to switch traffic.
I recall from speaking to a few folks who I knew, and who were still working at AT&T in the late 1980's that there was a plan to replace the 1A's with 5E's. I recall handling GSA E&M trunk circuit troubles that originated at 811 Tenth Avenue CCSA offices via a T1 handoff between NYT & AT&T. The T1 interface was a significant change from the traditional eight wire Type 2 E&M metallic circuit interfaces that had been previously used by AT&T on access circuits at the 811 POP.
To clarify a point about CCSA & the 1960's. the first #4ESS that went into message service was the Chicago 7 office in 1976. Since I left AT&T on January 1 1984, I don't know the time lines for the CCSA 1A retirtments, definitely well short of a 40 year replacement cycle, but with the introduction of SDN, and non hierarchal switching in the AT&T LD network, I suspect any migration of CCSA networks to 4ESS equipment must have occured in the early 1990's, in concert with AT&T's retirement of analog long haul FDM carrier facilites.
Bill NY7 PL Alumnus
snipped-for-privacy@bbs.cpcn.com wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@telecom-digest.org: