drmath@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu> (06/18/91)
rfarris@rfengr.com (Rick Farris) writes: > I may be moving my office soon, and because I entertain fantasies of > my own leased line connection to the Internet, I'd like to move right > next door to my CO. > Easier said than done. > I live in a small (5k) suburb of San Diego, and I *know* that I have a > CO inside the town limits. I even know it's a 1AESS. (619/259) For > some reason or other, TPC considers the physical location of its > plants to be some kind of top secret information -- probably so that > saboteurs won't come ashore and blow them up. How strange. I called, asked for, and got a tour of my CO (219/28x and 23x) They have a 5ESS and a 1AESS. Some of the out of service recordings and such are on wheels covered with magnetic tape (these are on the 1A floor, not the #5 :-) The #5 is equipped for ISDN and SS7. Some business customers apparently have ISDN lines. The switch serves about 70000 local subscribers. > So, is there some physical clue (besides fat wires) that I could look > for? I know to look for short fat brick buildings. Anything else? It will have NO windows, it may have Bell emblems on it, and you should find a parking lot behind it which is filled with Bell vehicles.
Wally Kramer <wallyk@bicycle.wv.tek.com> (06/21/91)
nstar!syscon!viking!drmath@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (Doctor Math) writes in Volume 11, Issue 471, Message 6 of 11: > [The CO] will have NO windows, it may have Bell emblems on it, and you > should find a parking lot behind it which is filled with Bell > vehicles. There are windows on the Corvallis, Oregon CO (503 75x, x=2,4,7). They have mini-blinds on them, but you can look through the holes where the string goes and see the equipment from outside. Also the entrance on the street side used to have a Bell logo on the door and as well as a sign discouraging visitors ("Telco employees only" or something like that.) It's been many years since I visited it though. Wally Kramer contracted from Step Technology, Portland, Oregon 503 244 1239 wallyk@orca.wv.tek.com +1 503 685 2658
carroll@cs.washington.edu> (06/22/91)
In article <telecom11.472.6@eecs.nwu.edu> Wally Kramer <wallyk@orca. wv.tek.com> writes: > nstar!syscon!viking!drmath@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (Doctor Math) writes > in Volume 11, Issue 471, Message 6 of 11: >> [The CO] will have NO windows, it may have Bell emblems on it, and you >> should find a parking lot behind it which is filled with Bell >> vehicles. > There are windows on the Corvallis, Oregon CO (503 75x, x=2,4,7). > They have mini-blinds on them, but you can look through the holes > where the string goes and see the equipment from outside. There are windows at our CO too (Bellevue, WA; 641, 643, 644, 747 and possibly others now), but admittedly not very big. Big enough, in any case, that you can look in and see part of the MDF as you drive by. Might be a regional thing. The CO/business office in Huntington, Indiana, where I grew up, has windows only on the first floor, where the Indiana Bell business office used to be before they moved out of town. This raises a tenuously related question. Huntington just got its second exchange (the whole town has been (219)356 since time immemorial, when the exchange was named FLint after the original Indian settlement). I see from the latest home town papers that the local hospital and some individual customers are being placed in (219) 358. Yet while I was growing up, other towns of roughly the same size had multiple exchanges in service. Logansport, for example, was served by GTE, and had *six* exchanges. Warsaw, which for most of the period I speak of was a town of *half* the size of Huntington, was served by United Telephone, and had four or five. The question: why? Legal reasons? Better (or more efficient) switching equipment in the Bell System? How much is this sort of thing responsible for the fact that we're rapidly running out of area codes? Jeff Carroll carroll@ssc-vax.boeing.com