Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id CAA07187; Sun, 9 Mar 1997 02:35:08 -0500 (EST) Date: Sun, 9 Mar 1997 02:35:08 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Message-Id: <199703090735.CAA07187@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #60 TELECOM Digest Sun, 9 Mar 97 02:35:00 EST Volume 17 : Issue 60 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Dialing *70 on Non-Call-Waiting Equipped Line (Steven K. Smith) Re: Dialing *70 on Non-Call-Waiting Equipped Line (Lee Winson) Re: Dialing *70 on Non-Call-Waiting Equipped Line (Almaden) Re: Dialing *70 on Non-Call-Waiting Equipped Line (Linc Madison) Re: Dialing *70 on Non-Call-Waiting Equipped Line (Stan Schwartz) Re: Dialing *70 on Non-Call-Waiting Equipped Line (R. Van Valkenburgh) Re: New York Wants to Ban Cellular Phone Use While Driving (Paul Smith) Re: New York Wants to Ban Cellular Phone Use While Driving (L. Weinstein) Re: New York Wants to Ban Cellular Phone Use While Driving (M. Sanchez) Re: New York Wants to Ban Cellular Phone Use While Driving (J. Henderson) Re: New York Wants to Ban Cellular Phone Use While Driving (G. Hlavenka) Re: New York Wants to Ban Cellular Phone Use While Driving (D. de Souza) Re: New York Wants to Ban Cellular Phone Use While Driving (Bob Goudreau) Re: President Carter's Call-In and Old 900-NNXs (Garrett Wollman) Re: President Carter's Call-In and Old 900-NNXs (Dale Neiburg) Re: 900-NNX Geographic Assignments (Bill Levant) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu * The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax or phone at: Post Office Box 4621 Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 847-329-0571 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu. The URL is: http://hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to tel-archives@massis.lcs.mit.edu to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: NETSmith@IBM.net (Steven K. Smith) Subject: Re: Dialing *70 on Non-Call-Waiting Equipped Line Date: Fri, 07 Mar 1997 14:42:59 GMT Organization: NETSmith Reply-To: NETSmith@IBM.net hal9001@panix.com (Robert A. Rosenberg) wrote: > The intent of *70 is to turn off Call-Waiting for the current > out-going call. Up until this week I've only had one line (which has > Call-Waiting). Thus all my Fax and ISP phone numbers have started > with *70W. I've just had the second wire on my RJ14 jacks activated as > a second line (dedicated to my Computer and its Fax Modem). Since I do > not plan to use it as an incoming voice line, I did not order > Call-Waiting on that line. Now I get an stupid intercept on the line > whenever I try to dial out using a number I forgot to remove the *70W > from. > The way I look at it, dialing *70 says I want no Call-Waiting during > the current call, I HAVE NO Call-Waiting AT ALL on the line, so there > is no reason NOT TO ACCEPT the *70 and just return a dial tone just > like on a Call-Waiting Line (I asked for it to be turned off and it IS > off). Can anyone explain this stupidity? It is not as if I were > attempting to use some feature that would only work if I had the > option activated on my line (*69 Call Return or something like > that). I'm asking to turn off an optional feature which was never > Active on the line in the first place (its like using *82 to turn off > All-Call-Blocking on a Per-Call-Blocking line - the result without > entering it is the same as you would get if you needed to and did > enter it so *82 is allowed to make sure that it is off). I'm sure that others can give you the wherewithall wrt CO limitations, but I'd just like to point out that I had a similar problem, with baroque variations involving hunt groups and my use of line switches; after fussing about (unsuccsefully) trying to get something compatible set up, I found out it didn't make any real difference for the fax/modem. The fact is that there's really no need to suppress CW for modem use (and I couldn't for faxing) -- the latest protocols (V.34, etc.) can live with the interruptions caused by CW signalling. They just treat it as a(nother) hiccup on the line, and go right on. So, don't worry about it. Regards, Steven K. Smith NETSmith@IBM.net ------------------------------ From: lwinson@bbs.cpcn.com (Lee Winson) Subject: Re: Dialing *70 on Non-Call-Waiting Equipped Line Date: 8 Mar 1997 03:08:33 GMT Organization: The PACSIBM SIG BBS > The way I look at it, dialing *70 says I want no Call-Waiting during > the current call, I HAVE NO Call-Waiting AT ALL on the line, so there > is no reason NOT TO ACCEPT the *70 and just return a dial tone just > like on a Call-Waiting Line (I asked for it to be turned off and it IS off) Yes, there is a good reason not to accept. It represents a wrong number for someone who doesn't have caller-ID. Perhaps a person dialed *70 when intending to dial another code -- this way the caller knows they made a mistake right away. ------------------------------ From: Almaden Subject: Re: Dialing *70 on Non-Call-Waiting Equipped Line Date: Fri, 07 Mar 1997 11:25:41 -0800 Organization: scruz-net Reply-To: AL@viscous.com Robert A. Rosenberg wrote: > The way I look at it, dialing *70 says I want no Call-Waiting during > the current call, I HAVE NO Call-Waiting AT ALL on the line, so there > is no reason NOT TO ACCEPT the *70 and just return a dial tone just > like on a Call-Waiting Line (I asked for it to be turned off and it IS > off). If you drive the wrong way on a one way street do you expect to see a full working set of traffic and parking signs facing you? Similarly if you dial *70 on a line without call-waiting I would expect and hope that you would receive an error message -- this lets you know that your assumption that the line has CW is in error, an important fact for the user to know. I find it very disapointing and scary that they turned this off in response to your request. What ever hapened to the concept of 'universal service'. ------------------------------ From: Telecom Subject: Re: Dialing *70 on Non-Call-Waiting Equipped Line Date: Thu, 06 Mar 1997 14:13:12 -0800 Organization: No unsolicited commercial e-mail! In article , hal9001@panix.com (Robert A. Rosenberg) wrote: > The intent of *70 is to turn off Call-Waiting for the current > out-going call. [entered numbers for the modem as *70W..., now has a line > without Call Waiting] Now I get an stupid intercept on the line > whenever I try to dial out using a number I forgot to remove the *70W > from. Well, don't forget that the original plan was that *67 would simply toggle caller ID delivery, with nothing to indicate the direction in which you were toggling. If you dialed *67 on a line that sends the caller ID data by default, it would have DISABLED it; if you dialed *67 from a line with per-line blocking, it would have ENABLED sending your caller ID data. They based this plan on some focus group study that showed that people found it confusing to have two codes, and wanted to have a single code. That is an example of research that shouldn't have even been done in the first place, or if it was done, the researchers should have sat the subjects down in the debriefing and explained to them, "You think you prefer to have just one code, but you're wrong. You don't really prefer that, unless you're really much stupider than one would expect of someone capable of dressing him/herself in the morning." Asking people what they prefer when they are completely ignorant of the ramifications of the choice is just plain silly. This same mentality also shows in the states that prohibit dialing "1+" on local calls. Requiring the "1+" on toll calls serves a valid purpose, preventing customers from placing an unwanted toll call without realizing that it's toll. However, forbidding the "1+" on local calls serves no purpose whatsoever, except to frustrate people who just want the call to go through. The other thing you have to remember about *70 specifically, though, is that not all areas that have Call Waiting support Cancel Call Waiting, and in some areas that do support CCW, it's an additional feature with an additional monthly charge. (I've only heard of this absurdity from GTE areas, which also often use 70# instead of *70.) Thus, there is a certain argument to be made in favor of having some way of indicating that you have requested a feature (Cancel Call Waiting) that is not available on your line. On the whole, though, I agree with you -- *70 should only route to intercept on a line that has CW but not CCW. ** Do not spam e-mail me! ** Linc Madison * San Francisco, Calif. * Telecom@Eureka.vip.best.com >> NOTE: if you autoreply, you must change "NOSPAM" to "com" << ------------------------------ From: Stan Schwartz Subject: Re: Dialing *70 on Non-Call-Waiting Equipped Line Date: Fri, 7 Mar 1997 00:27:01 -0500 In TD v17, #58, hal9001@panix.com wrote: > ...there is no reason NOT TO ACCEPT the *70 and just return a dial tone > just like on a Call-Waiting Line (I asked for it to be turned off and it IS > off). Can anyone explain this stupidity? It is not as if I were > attempting to use some feature that would only work if I had the > option activated on my line... Actually, in some areas (Bell Atlantic/NJ being one of them), *70 Call Waiting Block is a separate optional feature. BA/NJ gets $.50/month for it in addition to the standard call waiting charge. If you don't want to pay for it, you aren't able to block call waiting. NYNEX probably just charges $.50 more for call waiting and bundles it in. Everyone has to get their nickles and dimes somewhere. When I was on BellSouth, their charge for CO-based voice mail was low, but they got an extra $.50/month for the stutter dialtone notification of messages waiting. Stan ------------------------------ From: vanvalk@auburn.campus.MCI.net (R. Van Valkenburgh) Subject: Re: Dialing *70 on Non-Call-Waiting Equipped Line Date: Fri, 07 Mar 1997 18:48:35 GMT Organization: auburn.campus.MCI.net Reply-To: vanvalk@auburn.campus.MCI.net > The intent of *70 is to turn off Call-Waiting for the current > out-going call. > The way I look at it, dialing *70 says I want no Call-Waiting during > the current call, I HAVE NO Call-Waiting AT ALL on the line, so there > is no reason NOT TO ACCEPT the *70 and just return a dial tone . . . > [snip] I agree. But maybe we should be thankfull that the local telco hasn't decided to offer the disable call waiting feature as one of those optional features that you can get when not subscribed for $0.25 per call. ------------------------------ From: SWWV53D@prodigy.com (Paul Smith) Subject: Re: New York Wants to Ban Cellular Phone Use While Driving Date: 8 Mar 1997 13:13:16 GMT Organization: Prodigy Services Company 1-800-PRODIGY Banning cellular phones in cars because they may distract drivers is crazy. How about banning the eating of fast food meals while driving too? After all it is really hard to eat a big Mac while steering. How about banning smoking while driving? I wouldn't want anybody taking their eyes off the road to light a cigar. Banning all conversations while driving would also help. Drivers need to focus on driving. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 6 Mar 97 20:38 PST From: lauren@vortex.com (Lauren Weinstein) Subject: Re: NY Wants to Ban Cellular Phone Use While Driving > From: Curtis R. Anderson > According to a brief announcement heard on WKBW-TV during the six p.m. > news, the New York legislature is considering a bill which would ban > the driver's use of handheld cellular phones while the vehicle is > being operated. Greetings. All the recent bruhaha on this topic is the result of a single study. Not only did the authors of the study point out that their results were the same for handheld and "no-hands" cell phones, but they also went to great lengths to emphasize that they did not feel their results should be used as evidence to attempt banning of in-motion car cell phone use. In fact, it has been pointed out that much in-motion vehicle use has beneficial effects, such as the reporting of accidents and traffic problems, and other events that enhance safety in significant ways. Also, at least according to the info I've heard, insurance companies interviewed on this topic have no immediate plans to raise premiums for car cell phone users, mainly because there is no statistical evidence indicating that *overall* accident rates are higher for such users. Statistics can be tricky things. The authors of the study tried to be clear about them; it would be unfortunate if their results were misinterpreted by the legislative process. --Lauren-- Moderator, PRIVACY Forum www.vortex.com ------------------------------ From: Mariana Sanchez Subject: Re: New York Wants to Ban Cellular Phone Use While Driving Date: Fri, 7 Mar 1997 10:01:00 -0300 Hi Pat and all of you! I've read the article that Curtis R. Anderson wrote about the subject. Here in Argentina, this rule exists: it is forbidden to use your cellular phone when your are driving, except if you use a free hands gadget. Actually, very few people pay attention to this rule, and stadistics still says that a great percentage of car accidents (in the city) are caused for the distraction of drivers when using cellular phones. As a result, car retailers, insurance companies and cellular phones retailers offer free hands accesories at lower prices or for free. Regards, Mariana Sanchez ------------------------------ From: javier@YoyoDyne.ORG (Javier Henderson) Subject: Re: New York Wants to Ban Cellular Phone Use While Driving Date: 7 Mar 1997 18:53:50 GMT > It almost makes one wonder about folks who get cellular phones in > their cars for safety and convenience. Even if the bill does not pass, > one can expect insurance companies to raise liability premiums for > cars with cellular phones. I first had a similar thought, but then I decided not to worry about this. I, like most people these days, have a portable phone, as opposed to a permanently-mounted unit, so if I'm ever asked by the insurance co. whether my car has a phone installed or not, I can safely answer "no". As for whether it's safe to use a cell phone while driving, this has been the subject of endless debates over numerous Internet fora, but I personally try to avoid it. I have noticed many people changing lanes erratically while talking, and witnessed one accident where the guy in front of me ran a red light, while holding a phone to his ear, and caused a four car pile up. Javier Henderson http://www.kjsl.com/~javier ------------------------------ From: cgordon@worldnet.att.net (Gordon S. Hlavenka) Subject: Re: New York Wants to Ban Cellular Phone Use While Driving Date: 7 Mar 1997 03:08:56 GMT Organization: AT&T WorldNet Services They're talking about similar legislation in Illinois. HOWEVER, there's a leap of logic that seems to be universally made: The bills are concerned with HANDHELD phones. This is usually mentioned once, and then the rest of the article/news story/whatever simply refers to cellular phones in general. I have no problem with banning the use of handheld cellular phones while driving. I think it's a good idea, albeit somewhat sad that we find it necessary to legislate common sense. I doubt that we're going to see any attempt to ban handsfree cellular while driving. I run a small business, and spend a lot of time on the road. In fact, my office phone automatically forwards on busy/not answered to my cellular number. I use a Motorola flip with the 3W handsfree car kit. The quality of the call is good enough that Cellular One's voice dialing works fine handsfree (well, no worse than it does handheld :-). This gives me complete mobility, and yet talking on the phone -- w/handsfree -- while driving is practical and no more distracting than talking to a passenger. (Note that a passenger can also be a distraction, but I'm not aware of any pending legislation to ban them.) Gordon S. Hlavenka O- cgordon@worldnet.att.net ------------------------------ From: DVIEI1@jcpenney.com (Demien Vieira de Souza) Date: Thu, 6 Mar 1997 16:22:48 -0600 Subject: RE: New York Wants to Ban Cellular Phone Use While Driving In Brazil (that is where I am from), a person is prohibited from placing calls while they are driving a vehicle. This does not keep them from having a phone, placing a call while the car is being operated, or a passenger using it. Whether the law is obeyed, it is a different issue. I believe it is a good law. Cars are dangerous, and especially here in Texas, drivers tend to be very rude on the freeways, and tend to have huge trucks. They should be concentrating on the driving, and not on the phone. Calls from from a moving vehicle by the driver should be allowed in an emergency situation though, which would require several definitions of what an emergency actually is ... (As a comparison, what will separate a 911 call from a 311 call?) I have seen some companies that make cellular phones that have a microphone and speakers that are separate from the actual set, allowing you to talk and listen without handling the phone, which probably would be OK. You would still have to dial though, and whether that compares to changing the radio station or looking for a new CD/tape, or even eating fast food from a drive-through, would have to be determined. From my experience, US car insurance companies will raise their rates for just about any reason. Cordially, Demian Vieira de Souza - Comm Analyst JCPenney Communications Systems 12700 Park Central Place M/C 6009 Dallas, TX 75252, USA Office:(972)591-7361 FAX:(972)531-7361/591-6721 Internet: DVIEI1@JCPENNEY.COM / PROFS ID: DVIEI1 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You are quite correct about insurance companies and their rate setting philosophy. Any reason will do for an increase. A few years ago here in Illinois, one of the major insurance companies got sued in a class action because they were charging women more for some particular medical coverage than they were charging men for the same thing. Their contention was they had underwriting and claims experience to support this. The court ruled the other way and said women and men should pay the same premium. Well now, do you think the insurance company obeyed the court order by reducing what women had been paying? No, in fact what they did was *raise* the rates for men to equal the women's rate. Their response was 'all the court ordered us to do was equalize the prem- iums paid by each gender. You did not think *we* were going to take a hit on this did you? ...' Let the public pay for it. Then they had the nerve to send out a letter to the men explaining the raise in their premiums by claiming the court ordered them to raise the rate men were paying. All the court ordered was that the rates be equal. An old joke from the net a number of years ago was "define the term 'insurance premiums' ..." and the answer was those were what you paid each month to give you legal standing to sue the insurance company whenever you wanted to collect on a claim you had filed. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 6 Mar 1997 14:23:20 -0500 From: goudreau@dg-rtp.dg.com (Bob Goudreau) Subject: Re: New York Wants to Ban Cellular Phone Use While Driving Curtis R. Anderson wrote: > According to a brief announcement heard on WKBW-TV during the six p.m. > news, the New York legislature is considering a bill which would ban > the driver's use of handheld cellular phones while the vehicle is > being operated. > The Legislature is using those studies which suggest high accident > risk while the driver is talking on a cellular phone. No doubt the legislature's interest was stimulated by the University of Toronto study on cell phone use by drivers, which has gotten quite a bit of publicity of late (and has been discussed to death in the rec.autos.driving newsgroup). Before the legislators go ahead and ban the use only of handheld mobile phones by drivers (as is already done in various countries such as Israel, Switzerland and Australia), they might also want to pay attention to the part of the study that found that hands-free phones did *not* compile any better of a safety record than did their hand-held counterparts. I don't know if it would be good public policy to give people a false sense of security by indirectly encouraging hands-free units. Of course, a total ban on any mobile phone use by drivers would be very difficult to enforce against cars with hands-free units; a driver who got pulled over could always hang up and claim that he was talking to himself, or singing with the radio, etc. > It almost makes one wonder about folks who get cellular phones in > their cars for safety and convenience. Even if the bill does not pass, > one can expect insurance companies to raise liability premiums for > cars with cellular phones. This might be true, but from what I've seen, very few folks get dedicated "car phones" anymore. As mobile phone technology has improved over the past decade, self-contained hand-held units seem to have become the norm, even for units bought primarily as car breakdown insurance. Bob Goudreau Data General Corporation goudreau@dg-rtp.dg.com 62 Alexander Drive +1 919 248 6231 Research Triangle Park, NC 27709, USA ------------------------------ From: wollman@halloran-eldar.lcs.mit.edu (Garrett Wollman) Subject: Re: President Carter's Call-In and Old 900-NNXs Date: 6 Mar 1997 14:37:02 -0500 Organization: MIT Laboratory for Computer Science In article , Mark J. Cuccia gave a list of old geographic 900-NXXen, including: > 900-931 Boston MA (617) This is really quite a curious coincidence, since the ``choke'' exchange, then as now, is 617-931. Similarly for > 900-790 Montreal PQ (514) Garrett A. Wollman wollman@lcs.mit.edu ------------------------------ From: Dale Neiburg Subject: Re: President Carter's Call-in and Old 900-NNXs Date: Fri, 07 Mar 97 07:45:00 PST In TELECOM Digest V17, #58, Mark Cuccia wrote: > I don't remember if the program was sponsored or if it ran 'sustained', > but later on during his term, Carter had a few other live radio programs > of telephone conversations with citizens, but those were carried by the > government's non-commercial NPR network. And those NPR broadcasts were > arranged where if one desired to speak on the phone live on the radio > with Carter, they had to mail in requests in advance, and only those > selected were called on the day of broadcast. It's a minor point ... but this is a common misconception. NPR is owned by a trust fund, which in turn is wholly owned by its member stations. NPR is not "the government's", any more than CBS is. NPR does still get a tiny amount of money from the federal government -- last time I checked it was about 1% of the budget. I don't know why, since I doubt that the money is enough to pay for its required extra bookkeeping. Disclaimer: I am employed by NPR. Opinions expressed are my own. If NPR wants them, it will have to pay me extra.... ------------------------------ From: Wlevant@aol.com Date: Thu, 6 Mar 1997 22:27:32 EST Subject: Re: 900-NNX Geographic Assignments Some random thoughts as a follow-up to Mark Cuccia's post in issue #58, regarding the original use of 900-NNX to provide nationwide toll-free "choke" exchange service: It appears that at least some of the 900-NNX combinations match the LEC's own NPA-NNX "choke" service assignments for the same city. For example, when I was a kid (after the days of crank phones, but still in the good old crossbar days), all of the Philadelphia radio stations had contest/request lines beginning with 215-263. 900-263, on the other hand (according to Mark) was assigned to 900-service trunks terminating in Philadephia. In Pittsburgh, it was always 412-333-XXXX, and 900-333 was apparently assigned to Pittsburgh; in Baltimore 301-481-XXXX (now 410-481-XXXX) and 900-481. Some don't appear to match ... Washington DC uses 202-432-XXXX, but 900-432 was apparently NOT assigned to DC; New York had 212-955-XXXX, but 900-955 does not appear on Mark's list. I also remember that at some point during my misspent youth, WABC/New York changed its call-in number from 212-955-9988 to 212-955-9222 (-WABC); the intercept on the old number read back a different NNX (not 955), but I forget which. At least in Philadelphia, the "choke" exchange was actually served out of a "regular" exchange; there, it was 215-564. You could reach 215-564-XXXX by dialing 215-263-XXXX and the call would go through, but it generally didn't work the other way around ... you would ALWAYS get a busy signal. Judging from the ring and answer tones, this was a crossbar office. Originally, all of the 215-263 numbers assigned were in the ranges 263-6XXX, 263-7XXX and 263-8XXX.; at some point, they rearranged things (probably when they replaced the crossbar switch with ESS) and started to assign "overlapping" numbers, and 564-XXXX and 263-XXXX ceased to be even partially interchangeable. Before that happened, though, if you called a non-working number, the intercept message seemed to be keyed to the "range" dialed (e.g. 564-6XXX gets a "263" intercept; 263-1XXX gets a "564" intercept), regardless of what you actually dialed. I spent a lot of time trying to "call in and win" back then, with a seemingly disproportionate success rate (and no Mitnick tricks). The "choke" prefix was served from Center CIty Philadelphia, a different CO from the one serving my parents' house. If I called the "choke" number from home (our CO was one of the last to be converted from crossbar to ESS) one of three things would generally happen: 1) Connect, about 4 seconds after the last digit, followed *immediately* by a LOUD busy signal, which I believe originated from the local CO, since it came on too quickly, and with too few intermediate "clicks" for the call to have reached the distant CO and returned a busy; 2) Connect, about 4 seconds after the last digit, followed by about five seconds of silence, followed by a few clicks, and a somewhat fainter busy signal (which sounded like the call had actually reached the distant CO and returned a busy); or 3) Connect, as in number 2, except instead of the faint busy, a somewhat muted ringing tone ... and hopefully, the money/records/tickets. Interestingly, at about the same time, my parents installed a second and a third line; the second was on the same NNX as the first; the third line was on a newly-activated NNX with an ESS switch. On the first two lines, we had similar levels of success; on the third, we got a "reorder" (fast busy) fully 80% of the time, meaning that the call never even got out of the local switch. Needless to say, we didn't use that one for contest calls a whole lot. Of course, then Bell of Pennsylvania converted the whole CO to ESS, and put us out of the contest-winning business. Darn. Almost talked the parents into getting an FX from a crossbar office. **sigh** For many years, I have believed that our success with the call-ins was attributable to the fact (?) that the crossbar office equipment was somewhat less sophisticated than the ESS, and that the crossbar switch allowed more calls to actually reach the "choke" exchange than the ESS did. Does anyone out there have a comment, explanation or similar experience to report? Finally, the woman I was seeing at that point was the relief switchboard operator at a local discount department store, which had a 555 cord board and 16 CO trunks, all in sequence (215-NNX-1700 to -1715). She used to plug all 16 lines in, open all 16 keys, and dial out to the radio station on all 16 lines simultaneously. Problem "A" -- if you hear a ringing tone in the headset, which of the 16 lines is it? Problem "B" -- given the mechanics of "choke" exchanges, she was probably competing with herself for the limited number of interoffice trunks on which calls to 215-263-XXXX could be routed. Problem "C" -- the company went out of business shortly thereafter. I don't *think* it was her fault. :-) Bill [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: What you had to do in that case was go down the line of cord pairs on the switchboard and quickly close the key on each pair for just a second to see if the ringing sound was gone and just busy signals were heard. When you lost your audible ringing after closing and re-opening several keys one at a time, you knew which line it was. En masse, yank down all the other cords from the board and concentrate on the one you had which got through. Another gimmick of night-shift PBX operators who were bored at three in the morning was an early version of what children like to do now to be pesky: if their phone has three-way calling they will hook two other numbers together at random then sit silently and listen to the confusion as the two called-parties each accuse the other of placing the call which woke them up from sleep. But in the days of cordboards and free calls to directory assistance it went like this: PBX operator plugs in one cord pair to a trunk line and dials 216 then closes the key. Another pair is plugged in and the number 312 is dialed. Still a third pair is plugged in and 212 was the number, each time closing the key after dialing just three digits. Maybe if enough time remained before the earliest lines timed-out, add a couple more pairs dialing 213 on one and 415 on the other. Now, open all keys and dial across all five or six pairs '555-1212'. Within a few seconds you had directory assistance operators in Cleveland, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco all responding and questioning one another on 'what city please?'. Each would take that question from the others as a request to know what city/area they had reached, and as Chicago would respond with that phrase the others would say 'no, you reached Los Angeles/Cleveland/New York, etc ... and that would in turn set off another round as the statement 'you have reached Los Angeles' would be casually heard by the one on the east coast as 'have I reached Los Angeles?' ... no, she would say, this is New York, and that would start round three. Finally after a few seconds of this one of the operators would tell the others to shut up for a minute and they would all think about this peculiar connection and decide that apparently there was some sort of equipment malfunction going on. If you got more than four or five -- maybe six -- connections all up through your headset-in-common (that is, more than that on the PBX operator's talking path) you had too many people talking at once and it got too confusing. Far better to play this little joke with at most three or four directory assistance operators. Of course, long- distance directory assistance used to be totally free. Now it becomes a bit expensive to play even if you could find an old cordboard around somewhere. In those days also, there was no pesky problem of caller-id and/or 911 to reach emergency authorities. The game would work just as well with (on one pair) POlice-5 and (on another pair) FIre-7 then on both pairs at the same time, 1313. As the fire dispatcher and police dispatcher answered each other's call, the quick-witted PBX operator would have added to the pot (by dialing across the ringing on the two open lines before either answered) on one pair MOhawk-47 and on another pair RAndolph-61 then with both keys open '200' so now you had the Chicago Transit Authority overnight duty office on the line talking to the Commonwealth Edison overnight duty office with the police and fire departments on the line with them. Invariably at least one or more of them was convinced the city was involved in some major calamity at that time of night if all these people were calling at one time. Perhaps a major fire had started and police were asking Transit to reroute the busses and Edison to cut the power ... but they too after a few seconds of accusing each other of making the call would stop to think about it and realize they had been taken. The best the kids can do now-days is if they have a two line phone with three-way calling on each line and a 'conference' button on the phone instrument then I presume with some effort and practice they can bring up four parties all at one time or even five parties if they themselves wish to speak up and pretend to be just another of the victims. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #60 *****************************