Re: [Telecom] 911 service not universal

hancock4 18 years ago

***** Moderator's Note *****

>
> Those numbers might have been derived from the MF codes used by Toll
> operators and Toll Test Board technicians such as I ;-).

Step by step offices in the Bell System often used 11n instead of n11. This may have been legacy from candle stick phones where apparently a loose pulse could be inadvertently generated when going off hook.

Many places in the Bell System used 211 as a direct line to the long distance operator.

411 was information and today "411" is a slang term for information, eg. "What's the 411 on the new movie?" I hear it on TV a lot but I don't hear it person.
611 was repair. That was dropped by the Baby Bells because it was supposedly "unfair" to competition, something that I don't understand. Years ago 611 was answered by technicians at a nearby test board, today it is some clerk far away.

Either 711 or 811 was a direct line to the testboard. This was used only by craft personnel when working at a subscriber site for testing.

In rural areas, the shown number in the phone book for FIRE was the fire chief's name and home phone.

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DTC 18 years ago

Back around 1989, a phracker friend of mine was dialing 411, 511, 611,

711, and 811 just to see what services it brought up. One of them connected to a 911 resource. He hung up and I got a call back from a emergency dispatcher...followed by a visit by a policeman to make sure everything was all right. This was in Carrollton, TX with a GTE ESS switch.

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Curtis R Anderson 18 years ago

Rochester Telephone had their #5XB setup serving northern Rochester and the town or Irondequoit so that dialing 711 got the ANI readback in Jane Barbe's voice, at least in the mid-1970s.

I learned that one from one of my chilhood friends whose father worked for Rochester Telephone. We called that number at his house when his father was home, and my friend said to his father, "Dad, there's this sexy woman speaking on the phone!"

Another friend of mine had an uncle working for Rochester Telephone who taught us the automated testboard sequence. If the NXX was odd, one dialed something like 981-XXXX, if NXX was even, dialing 982-XXXX where XXXX was the last digits of the phone number one was calling from reached the testboard. A dial tone was heard. Dialing 4 (pulse or tone) and hanging up would cause the phone to ring. Answering the phone was acknowledged with high tone. Hang up the phone to reset.

These codes were changed frequently to keep us young phone phreaks from tying up markers for too long. Then again, social engineering was an important tool for us to learn things.

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