Touch Tone Charges - Bell Canada Still Charges Extra $2.80 a month [Telecom]

These days, pulse dialing costs more, because they have to stick an additional 'pulse to DTMF converter' on the front of the line before the call hits the DTMF-only switch. [This is not done] in Bell Canada Territory - they do the reverse, [and] filter out Touch-Tone if you are on a grandfathered rotary dial line.

Politically, however, it is a 'no sale' to try to charge a premium, now, for what was the 'basic' service -- over what was hyped for years, if not decades as the premium ('worth paying extra for') services.

- This is not the thought of the people at Bell Canada (Ontario & Quebec)

Quote from 2001

On June 1, 2001, Bell Canada filed a proposal with the CRTC to include the monthly charge for Touch-Tone service on all residential single-line customer bills - an initiative that would have added $2.80 per month to the bills of affected customers.

"After reviewing various ways in which to address our customers' concerns, we have decided to file to withdraw our proposal to standardize Touch-Tone service and, instead, we will continue to provide rotary dial service on the same basis as we have since 1993," Sheridan added. Bell's existing single line residential rotary dial and digit-pulse customers in Ontario and Quebec - numbering about 285,000 - will be able to keep their rotary phone service at no additional charge. For those choosing to switch to Touch-Tone, Bell is offering refurbished Touch-Tone telephones at a 30 per cent discount, allowing customers to take full advantage of the services.

http://*.bce.ca/en/news/releases/reg/2001/07/24/6243.html Fast forward to 2009...

Bell has grandfathered all rotary dial lines - if you dont move you dont have to pay the $2.80 a month for Touch-Tone, they put a filter on the line so that Touch-Tone will not dial out. If you move then Bell will start charging the $2.80 extra a month.

This was also featured in Readers Digest:

formatting link
Cable and Phone "Privileges" - Check out your monthly Bell Canada bill. Chances are, there's a $2.80 charge called "touch-tone" service. To avoid it, you'd need a rotary-dial phone, if you can find one in an antique shop. Otherwise, that's an extra $33.60 a year!

Reply to
jwillis
Loading thread data ...

For many years Ma Bell used to just reverse the line polarity so Touch Tone dials wouldn't work. Of course if you knew about this you simply [flipped] the pair at the demarc.

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

The Touch-Tone pads on WECO instruments could be disabled by reversing tip and ring, but those of other manufacturers didn't seem to care. Does anyone know why this was so? Was WECO's Touch-Tone pad designed for it, or was that a by product that became a feature?

Reply to
T

There is considerable suspicion that no such "pulse to DTMF" converter exists. A telephone switch must respond to DC signals (pulses) because the hookswitch sends DC, so responding to DC pulses (such as a subscriber flashing) is an integral part of the switch function. Touch Tones are not digital, and must be converted into a form the switch computer understands. Accordingly, there is no evidence that pulse costs more. There's a separate ongoing long discussion in this newsgroup on this issue you may wish to review. If you have technical literature describing the "pulse to Touch Tone converter", could you cite the book?

I do not think any "filter" is added to the line. Rather, the switch software merely ignores Touch Tone signals from that subscriber. It's no different than if you attempt to flash to get 3-way calling but your line is not equipped for that, when you flash, nothing happens.

Reply to
hancock4

It was a consequence of that extra-special pad design. It saved money by having only one of those expensive transistors.

True, it had two tapped cup-core inductors, and was hand tuned; but we all know transistors are expensive!

Reply to
David Lesher

The odd thing with WECO pads was that the inductors had a tap for the fourth column tones that were usually used only on AUTOVAN phones: the fourth column on those pads was for the military precedence levels. Since the tap was there already, many hams used it to add a column to their pads, which they needed for control of ham repeater stations.

Bill, W1AC

Reply to
Bill Horne

Actually the single transistor was a brillian design, it acts as a simple amplifier and then uses an LC tank to generate the frequencies, hence the two cup core inductors.

Reply to
T

A recollection, perhaps an incorrect one: In the early days (Ernestine Days) of Touch-Tone, Ma Bell didn't want you to be able to send out tones once answer supervision was present. Does this click with anyone?

Reply to
Sam Spade

I don't know if it was a feature WECO produced sets. But the initial Touch Tone sets most definitely had thier T/R swapped. If a Bell installer was putting one in a home he'd swap the incoming pair.

Later sets dropped the polarity guard entirely since they were going to be sold directly to customers.

Reply to
T

In the NYC area at least, as late as 1980 or so (I didn't use this later) a "toll call" would cause a current reversal as the connection was being processed. So.... if you placed a diode in series with the phone line, the person could make "local" calls but no long distance (that is, they'd get disconnected).

Incidentally, I discovered this when perusing the newspapers and coming across one of those telco teensy print legal notices. I don't recall the exact wording but it used the term "battery reversal" (or maybe "battery current reversal") for a tariff regarding toll blocking. It also stated that the telco wouldn't be liable if the caller still got through..

Oh, and for a[n] historically interesting advert of this sort, check out a scan I made nearly 2 decades ago:

formatting link

Reply to
danny burstein

According to both an AE catalog and a Bell text, it was standard practice for a Step by Step swtich to reverse polarity after the call went through.

For semi-post-pay public ph>A recollection, perhaps an incorrect one: In the early days (Ernestine

I doubt that's correct. We had Touch Tone in that era and it would send tones during the course of the phone (which the other party did not appreciate since they were loud).

Touch Tone sounds were very carefully chosen to avoid sounding like human tones or other internal system tones that they could be confused with.

But very early on Bell pushed the idea of connecting to computers via TT phones. In those days our bank staff used a TT pad to contact their computer. (It was a separate pad since the neighborhood itself hadn't gone TT yet so the phone still had a dial on it.)

Reply to
hancock4

Reversal on supervision was a function of the CO. As I recall, most step-offices did, but XB did not. I don't recall about panel.

Of course coil phone lines DID reverse...

Reply to
David Lesher

To meet the very high service demands of the Bell System---which is why 40 year old units still work perfectly fine today--they used very high grade components. As they put it, the phone had to withstand drops to a hard floor, a cold storage locker, and a hot humid sunny window sill.

Further, 40 years ago high grade transistors were not cheap. Now whether it was necessary to use such high-grade durable components is tough to say. But since the Bell System owned the equipment and was responsible for all maintenance, it was to their advantage to reduce downtime and maximize the life of the equipment.

Reply to
hancock4

Yep - I had an old red 2500 set with a toggle switch. Flipping it would toggle the rightmost column from 3,6,7,# to the F, FO, P etc. frequencies.

Reply to
T

It was a brilliant design only when the transistor cost a few bucks, and the magnetics didn't.

But a few years later it was 180 degrees around. But Ma/WECO kept making the same pad for about 20 years....

Reply to
David Lesher

Many newer WECo telsets or pads had a "Polarity Guard" which was basically a full-wave (bridge) rectifier.

Line polarity had become a big problem after Divestiture. Many people were purchasing their phones at their local Five & Dime or drug store. These were designed to work on unknown polarity because so many homes were actually wired reversed.

formatting link
Cable pairs were also reversed. What worked one day for someone on a pair that had been reversed for years, would fail when the splicers made a throw, or replaced a section of cable.

Sadly, some employees were not as well trained as those from yesteryear, and their supervisors also couldn't care less.

Here's a good site with telset wiring diagrams:

formatting link

Reply to
John F. Morse

The old ITT Telecommunications / Cortelco 2554 I had had a tone pad with a Mostek IC on board to generate the tones using a "colorful" 3.58 MHz crystal, the same crystal used in NTSC color television sets for chroma processing.

I can't remember the date code, but it seemed to be in the early '70s or so.

I presume some of the Independents felt it would be better to use one IC than to have to tune coils in a tone-dial phone.

Reply to
Curtis R Anderson

I ran into this "feature" back in 1998. I was at a payphone at the garage at Hoover Dam on the Nevada-Arizona border. I tried to use an

800-number to connect to AT&T Long Distance: dial AT&T, enter my account number, enter the number to which I wished to connect. But this payphone cut off the touchtone pad after I dialed AT&T. I don't know what company served Boulder, NV back then. Nearby Las Vegas was run by Sprint.
Reply to
Richard

Not totally. They did make evolutionary changes "under the hood". The 500 set was improved in numerous ways between its introduction and termination. As mentioned, dial lamps were converted to LEDs from plain bulbs.

Reply to
hancock4

Cabling-Design.com Forums website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.