Received: by bu-cs.BU.EDU (5.58/4.7) id AA05993; Sat, 28 Jan 89 15:40:35 EST Message-Id: <8901282040.AA05993@bu-cs.BU.EDU> Date: Sat, 28 Jan 89 15:19:01 EST From: The Moderator Reply-To: TELECOM@bu-cs.BU.EDU Subject: TELECOM Digest V9 #35 To: TELECOM@bu-cs.bu.edu TELECOM Digest Sat, 28 Jan 89 15:19:01 EST Volume 9 : Issue 35 Today's Topics: AOS Experiences Re: Victims of Wrong Numbers Re: Query about Telebit Re: area code map When DDD Began ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Kenneth_R_Jongsma@cup.portal.com To: telecom-request@xx.lcs.mit.edu Subject: AOS Experiences Date: Fri, 27-Jan-89 10:15:23 PST Had an interesting experience with a hotel phone the other day on a trip to Colorado Springs. Needed to make a few phone calls on my company credit card. Didn't have the numbers, so I was going to dial directory assistance on the card. Phone instructions say to dial 8+0+ for long distance (collect or credit card) calls. No problem thinks I, so I dial 8+0+616+555+1212. Get recording (lousy computer voice) saying number invalid. Try again after verifying that calls were authorized from room. (Many hotels disable calls when room is empty). Still get recording, so I dial 8+1+616+555+1212 and get through. Figure call will be billed to room. Now try to make call (8+0+616+xxx+xxxx) but notice that credit card tone was not AT&T tone. Wait for a few seconds and get recording "For Cheapest Rates, have your Mastercard or VISA number ready!" Thinking that I wasn't going to fall for this, I wait some more. Person comes on line and says "Long Distance Operator, May I Help You?" I said I wanted an AT&T operator and she put me through. Next call, same routine, except that AOS operator asks what hotel I am staying at. I tell her and she says to dial 8+00+. I tried this and was able to dial AT&T calls, including my card number with no intervention or problem. Interestingly, this technique was not posted anywhere in the room. I didn't bother asking what the AOS rate would have been, since I know it would have been a rip off. By the way, the AT&T operator volunteered that I would get the direct dial rate if I mentioned what I did to get through to AT&T. No surcharge... Moral: Ask for AT&T or hang up. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ------------------------------ To: uunet!bu-cs.BU.EDU!telecom@uunet.UU.NET Subject: Re: Victims of Wrong Numbers Date: 28 Jan 89 13:35:22 EST (Sat) From: john@jetson.UPMA.MD.US (John Owens) When my wife and I moved into our apartment in January, we got a number that had been recently given up by Jartran truck rental, who had closed their local office. To make things worse, the number had been Jartran's recently enough to be in the current phone book, published in January, just *after* we moved in. So, naturally, we got large numbers of calls asking if we could rent trucks. After we moved into our house (the apartment was temporary), we decided to go ahead and get the redirect intercept, so people could find us. [We had moved four times in four years; at one point, I could follow a chain of three old numbers where all the redirects were still in place.] Naturally, we still got calls for Jartran truck rental. Typical conversations: Caller: I'd like to rent a truck. Me: I'm sorry, you have the wrong number. Caller: Is this xxx-xxxx? Me: Yes it is, but that's the wrong number. Caller: But I got it from the recording. Me: Well, actually, the number you called to get the recording was wrong. Caller: How do you know what number I called? Me: It used to be our number. [Of course!] Caller: But it says right here in the phone book that yyy-yyyy is the Jartran number. Usually, of course, I wasn't this patient. One day, my wife was sick and stayed home from work. She got almost twenty calls for Jartran that day! [She said she doesn't know why they closed the office; they had plenty of potential business!] So she decided to do something about it, and called the local telco. They suggested redirecting to the special operator, who would ask who was being called and play either the redirect or a disconnect message. This worked out well, and we stopped getting calls for Jartran. A few months later, I got a call from an old friend who said he had had a terrible time trying to get my number. Every time he'd call the old number (long distance), he'd get the special operator, who'd ask who he was calling. He'd try to tell her, but she couldn't hear him, and would hang up. He finally got a local (to him) operator who knew what was happening: the LD company wouldn't open the voice path in the other direction until it got answer supervision and could start charging. She was able to force the path open, and he finally got the number.... One Bell System: it worked. -- John Owens john@jetson.UPMA.MD.US uunet!jetson!john +1 301 249 6000 john%jetson.uucp@uunet.uu.net [Moderator's Note: It sure did work. If they wanted to open the market to a variety of long distance companies, that's fine with me. But why the judge felt he had to bash the smithereens out of the Bell System in the process is beyond me. PT] ------------------------------ To: ingr!comp-dcom-telecom@uunet.UU.NET From: guy@b11.INGR.COM (Guy Streeter) Subject: Re: Query about Telebit Date: 27 Jan 89 17:13:01 GMT In article boottrax@csd4.milw.wisc.edu (Perry Victor Lea) writes: >X-TELECOM-Digest: volume 9, issue 26, message 8 > > Do not use a Telebit modem on an amiga, that is if it's over 9600 baud. >Amiga systems use as a standard US Robotics ONLY!... I fail to comprehend these statements. Perhaps you mean to say that some piece of software you are running assumes it is talking to a USR modem, and is also incapable of >9600 baud? Nothing about the Amiga, hardware or system software, prevents th use of its serial port at higher speeds, or requires the use of a USR modem. -- Guy Streeter b11!guy@ingr.com ...uunet!ingr!b11!guy ------------------------------ Date: Sat Jan 28 02:48:19 1989 To: telecom@bu-cs.bu.edu Subject: Re: area code map From: zygot!john@apple.com (John Higdon) On Jan 26 at 19:17, bruce nelson writes: > There weren't any area codes before the 60's. To call long distance, you had > to tell the operator what city and number you were calling. Excuse me. The NPA was established in about 1951. I happen to have a local 1956 telephone directory with an area code map and long distance dialing instructions. I remember that Grandma's phone number was preceded by "816" (she lived in Independence, MO) and then, as now, a "1" was not dialed before long distance. The operator was used only for collect, third party billing, and person to person calls. There certainly were area codes before the sixties! -- John Higdon john@zygot ..sun!{apple|cohesive|pacbell}!zygot!john ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 28 Jan 89 14:51:59 EST From: telecom@bu-cs.BU.EDU (TELECOM Moderator) To: telecom@bu-cs.bu.edu Subject: When DDD Began In the message just before this, John Higdon disputes a comment by another user regards the beginning of DDD (Direct Distance Dialing). He is partly correct, and partly wrong. Like all major improvements to the telephone, DDD was phased in across North America over several years, beginning, as Mr. Higdon points out, in the early 1950's. Area codes and prefixes were assigned everywhere -- even in communities which still had all manual service -- in the late forties, or by 1950 at the latest. Area codes and prefixes were used by rate/route/billing operators long before anyone could actually punch the corresponding buttons to place the call. A good telecom trivia question might be which community was the first to be able to place/receive DDD calls? Higdon is probably correct it was in 1951 or thereabouts; although I am not sure *who* they could dial until at least a few other communities were 'on-line'. During the early to middle fifties, there were some communities 'advanced enough' to have DDD available to them while other communities were still operating a manual exchange. The 'most advanced' DDD-equipped exchanges still had to use operator intervention to call manual systems or other dial systems not yet brought into the DDD program. Then there were communities which had dial service, but the numbering was not standardized. Fort Wayne, IN and La Fayette, IN were two example which come to mind. Typically, it was some GTE operating company whose numbering scheme was out of synch with AT&T's idea of how things were to be numbered. Northern Indiana has been 219 since the beginning; and central Indiana has always been 317; yet until around 1970 or so, long after we here in Chicago could direct dial 90 percent of North America, to place a call to Lafayette we still dialled "211" and passed the request to the operator. She likewise dialed nothing, but instead, plugged into a circuit and waited patiently until someone at the other end screamed "Lafayette!" at her. And Lafayette had local seven digit dialing at that...but no DDD because the local telco there resisted changing the way things were done. Lafayette's telco had a special arrangement with Purdue University: Purdue had automatic dialing on their campus before the town of Lafayette had dial service. In those days you just lifted the receiver and asked for Purdue. From a Purdue extension, dialing "9" brought a click, and silence until a Lafayette operator answered to place the local call, etc. Once Lafayette went dial, seven digit numbers were used with one exception: To reach Purdue you dialed "90" to reach the Purdue operators, or "92" plus the desired five digit extension on campus. Due to local politics, Lafayette would not change Purdue's main number from "90" to a more conventional seven digit number. Until they *did*, they could not have DDD and expect to reach Escanaba, MI or Memphis, TN or anywhere in Alaska with the same ease they reached the Student Union Building. Finally they came around, as did Fort Wayne and a lot of other cities who had all sorts of albiet convenient, but out of synch dialing routines. By the middle 1960's more and more telephone subscribers were able to DDD with fewer and few exceptions. When the original message writer said "...before 1960 you placed your calls with the long distance operator..." he may have been right in the context of *his* telephone exchange. Remember, Richmond, IN and Crown Point, IN went dial for the first time only in 1963. While Chicago started converting to dial in 1939, the job was not complete until 1951 in the city proper, and not until *1960* if you count all the suburbs. We dialed "711" to get northern Indiana suburbs still on manual service (getting an operator in Whiting who finished the job), and "911" to get an operator in the northern suburbs for communities like Fox Lake, IL which finally cut to dial in the early 60's. I guess saying that '...we had area codes and DDD in 1951...' depends entirely on what telco you were on. The first references to it in the Chicago phone book were 1956; and then in a limited way. An area code map was printed, but with the notation that not every place listed could be dialed direct at that time. I think it is safe to say by the middle sixties DDD was pretty much a part of American telephony. With the exception of Nevada toll stations, of course, and the one place in Maine which kept its old fashioned service for a few more years. Patrick Townson ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest *********************