Posted on 03/04/2006 10:22:21 PM PST by HAL9000
Excerpt -
AT&T Inc. is nearing the acquisition of BellSouth Corp. for roughly $65 billion, people familiar with the situation said Saturday evening. A deal could be announced as early as Monday, these people said.~snip~
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Yea and operator assisted up till the early 1970's still under Ma Bell. Then came ESS designed by Western Electric. ESS is the switching system. What would have taken in equipment in space the size of a Walmart was put into a space the size of the average living room. Ma Bell developed it. Oh yea the transistor was Bell Labs invention as well.
You could have any phone you liked-- as long as it was black and weighed thirty five pounds.Yea I'm 48 I remember the old black rotaries and I remember 8 party lines also. You are forgetting something here though. It was called the space race. Much of the newer technology starting in the 1970's evolved from miniaturization and the commerical application of chips and circuit boards.
A second jack in the house? Well, let's see if we can get another mortgage.
True you had to pay for it. But like I said if your wiring for your phone inside your home goes bad you better be paying the maintenance fee or know how to trouble shoot. Everything from the interface on is yours now.
Instead of tennis elbow you got phone knuckle from the rotarty dial.
Touch tones came along fairly quickly and still for reliability nothing beats a Western Electric Touch Tone Phone. {The heavy ones}
Ma Bell was not a "benign" monopoly.
Neither is your local power company. Wanna see them busted up and watch the fun during a storm? The phone company should be ran as a utility. There is something you don't quite understand going on. The phones require phone lines. That means either Buried wire cable or Buried Fiber Optic cable. Now here's the problem. Up till the split Ma Bell could afford to keep big crews on the job. Many were what was called cable splicers. They repaired the actual cables or burred new ones. They were the guys with the air duct ran into the man hole with the tarp over the top. When was the last time you saw one? Think back to the mid 1980's and how many Ma Bell trucks and vans you saw on the road. Think how many you see now even in a week.
Before the split all trouble calls were handled on a local basis. Meaning repair service was in the nearest town of fair size. You didn't get put on 30 minutes hold to Louisville, Kentucky with a never ending announcement of due to weather we are experiencing a high volume of calls. Yes somewhere in the 7 state area it is raining.
You had repairmen who were there to find the trouble if it took all day. Today's repairmen are timed and given X number of trouble tickets to clear in 8 hours. If they go to your line and it works it's clear. Most of the time it is checked remotely the morning of dispatch. If the trouble isn't present at that time they will not dispatch nor will they tell you that either.
Next item. Price gouging. Not by Ma Bell but by Bubba Bob's phone Company who now charges you $5.00 for a 1 minute call if you use your Ma Bell card because Bubba Bob owns the phone. Motels the same way. Never, ever, call home collect from a motel. How about slamming?
The changes were coming to Bell but the technology had to catch up. Now Ma Bell is basically the same as she was in the late 1980's. Even Bubba Bob likely uses MA Bells lines as does many Baby Bells. Most all use AT&T's switching also.
what does a small block chevy have to do with telecom :) j/k...
If there was ever a case the justice department should intervene, it is this...
why was that? didn't that kinda defeat the purpose of having phone service for some?
no fax, answering machine or modem??? that makes no sense...
That likely wasn't Ma Bells fault as such. I was in Europe in the late 1970's in Spain and Italy. When we hit port I would have to go to the phone company and sit sometimes up to 6 hours waiting on a phone line back to the states. The fade out or not being able to hear was because satellite technology was not an absolute science at that time. Your call either went via satellite links or by the trans-Atlantic cable. IOW the call was also as good as the other countries phone system which most of the time was U.S. hand me downs of our previous systems.
AT&T used to run ads admonishing people to promptly answer their phones.
"at least the AT&T rate plans were decent"
When I got switched to Cingular in the split my rate went up 50%. :(
No problems with installation, scheduling, customer service for DISH, etc. Well, except for one minor detail which started in November. When I signed up a promotion in my area in my area for 3 months credit for cable television and cable modem charges.
I met the conditions per their confirmation as of 11/4. After numerous phone calls, transfers to various different departments, each person I spoke with had a different story and on and on and on.
Third week in January I'd had enough. After having worked in customer service I knew complaints addressed to the President (of any company) would result in kid glove treatment. I searched the net looking for a corporate office with no success. I finally found the website set up for stockholders and Investor relations.
I ended up calling an SVP's office listed under stockholder services and asked for Edward Whitacre, Jr by name. I was immediately transferred to a unit whose sole purpose is to handle presidential complaints. I briefly explained my problem and what steps I'd taken to resolve my problem. I was assigned to a CSR who issued immediate credit for one promotion and was assured the other promotional credit would be applied to the subsequent billing. She gave me her direct number, was able to see who/how many times/when I had called in, promised training would be given, issued credits and called several times to make sure I was satisfied.
Presidential complaints are given top priority. I've only used that route twice in my life and only after I've exhausted all other options.
The moral of my story is if one has done one's level best to resolve problems and no satisfactory resolution has been arrived at, file a complaint with the CEO or Presidents office. You will get an answer and be treated with kid gloves.
I don't miss having to whack the phone receiver against the desktop every so often to deal with "carbon packing", to deal with the pesky noise (and deterioration of audio quality) that it caused.
I'm not sure whether or not I miss being one of the apparently very few who knew about that bit of arcana. (I do know that I enjoyed the shock expressed by others when they'd finally try it themselves and see that it really did work.)
Go rent a copy of "The President's Analyst", LOL!
For the most part, with rare exception, puthings didn't exist. The first to make widespread market penetration was the answering machine, and it cost and arm and a leg. There was a huge lawsuit over it, too. Ma Bell did NOT want third parties to be allowed to hook anything up to "her" wires. So, she raised a stink about how these devices could damage the system.
The result was the court not really buying that argument, but, compromising. There were two numbers on the label of each "third party" device (answering machine, extention phone, and later, cordless phone), which you "had" to report to the local telco before you could legally connect it to The System. One of the two numbers was the registration number, and the other was the "REN" number -- the "Ringer Equivalent Number", which told the telco how much current the device would draw when it was ringing. (Traditional phones drew a lot of current, at a fairly high voltage, when ringing. There was a rather convoluted tuned circuit inside the phone, for the purpose of directing the very low voltage/current signal (i.e., the speech signal), and the high voltage/current ring.)
It took a lot of juice to travel those miles from the central office to your home, and then, make it through that filter, and finally, swing the hammer back and forth to physically slam into two bells with enough oomph to ensure you'd be able to hear it from anywhere in the house.
I think the ring voltage was something like 70 volts. Or rather, I should say it is something like 70 volts. Nothing has changed in that department.
The REN was a bit more interesting. The telco putatively wanted to know how many phones you had, and how much current each would draw when ringing, so that they would know how much current to direct to your house line when your phone rang. Personally I don't buy it. I think the system had a certain amount of amps behind it, and the individual lines would draw what they'd draw. I do not believe that there was a current-limiter at each line, restricting the output to whatever the math told them was required by the combined RENs of each device you reported. But, that's just conjecture on my part (but I think it makes more sense than anything else). My premise is that Ma Bell's main goal was NOT "to protect the lines", but rather, to erect obstacles to any competition, and to raise the cost of entry.
In the final analysis, the uber-critical "REN" number was rendered pretty much moot by the proliferation of third party phones with electronic ringers. A phone that draws its operating power from the house current (rather than via the phone lines), or, a phone with a very efficient piezo-element for a "ringer", will draw a trivially small amount of current while ringing, a tiny fraction of the amps drawn by those huge double-bell hammer-ringer jobs.
Gee, isn't this exciting history! :)
I guess I'm boring even myself to sleep! Mainly, I'm just recalling the absurd nonsense hoops we had to jump through "back in the day" when we wanted to do something as simple as plug in an extention phone or answering machine. And yes, we did dutifully call in the info each time we added a device -- at least, I did! -- I did not want to get fined or whatnot for "illegally" hooking up a "device" -- and, thanks to the "REN" business, they really could tell if you had hooked up more than the number of devices you were "authorized" to have connected.
As certain as I am that they did not restrict the ring-current going down each line, I am equally certain that they did send out pulses to detect ring-current draw. I have even heard these pulses, I had a phone that would "tingle" out a short sound from its ringer every night in the wee hours, when no one was supposed to be awake. Upon query, the telco fessed up to their "automated equipment" doing "testing" of lines on a regular basis. I was not supposed to hear anything, but my three dolla fone did not properly filter out the test-pulses from its ring circuit.
And lest you think even that idea bordering on paranoia, consider that we are speaking of a company that (according to what I was told by an employee) would have even the operators, during "slack time", dig into the classifieds and small display ads in the local newspapers, comparing phone numbers to check if they were "residential" or "commercial" telephone accounts.
When they ran across someone that they decided was using a home phone for what they determined to be "business", they would sock it to 'em. Back fees, etc., along with a forced "upgrade" to commercial line.
When I asked the obvious question -- WHY do they charge more (not to mention so much more) for a "commercial" number versus a "residential" number (I had both at that time), I was told, very matter-of-factly, completely UNapologetically, "if YOU are using your telepone to make money, then WE ought to be able to take some of that money."
Yes, we all love the phone company, don't we.
Go rent "The President's Analyst". Apart from the hilarious plot, pay attention to the scene at the cafe where the two spies -- Omar Shariff and what's-his-name, are comparing notes (one an American spy, one a Soviet spy, but, the "camaraderie of the trade" between them). The Russian spy says something to the tune of, "I've been all over this world, and there is one thing I've found to be the same in every country I've seen. No matter where you are, no matter what country you are in, no matter how the people live, everyone hates the phone company."
The moldy french fries under the seat.
As a former AT&T Mgr. satellites were not used in 1970 for anything but experimentation..Overseas call were a combination of AT&T to the Trans-ocean cable or to High {4.0 MHz to 18.0 MHz range}Freq AM radio. Once you connected to the other country's technology, you became a victim of their equipment which was not 100% compatible with ours. Plus many of these countries were in the "dark ages" as far as telephone equipment. Fading was probably caused by use of the HF radio connection.
Think of it as job security.
Actually SBC took over AT&T, they are using the AT&T name as a marketing ploy.
Do you remember what long distance cost per minute? even when you don't discount for inflation? ATT was still hitting me for $.35 a minute when I got my LD switched over to a $.05/minute company. ATT sent me ads fairly recently telling me how much I can save by getting their LD service for 20 cents/min. for the first 3 months (plus tax and tag, of course).
if a man lives long enough...
When we were first married (1967) my wife pretty well ran the secretaries in the engineering dept.
"Hello Charlie!"
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