dattier@ddsw1.mcs.com (David Tamkin) (08/28/90)
Jeff Carroll wrote in volume 10, issue 481: | This thread reminds me of a remarkable phenomenon I observed |on a recent trip to Chicago. At the Dunkin' Donuts in Des Plaines (on |Higgins, if I recall correctly), there are four pay phones; one next |to the entrance, and three on the back wall. My recollection is that |the one at the entrance and one of the ones on the back wall were |Centel phones, and the other two were operated by *Illinois Bell*. | Question: Are the IBT phones COCOTs? Or is the Dunkin' Doe |franchise located in some sort of Telephone Demilitarized Zone? No, there are no TDZ's here yet; I think the ICC is still mulling over local loop competition. It certainly isn't a reality in 1990. [There are several buildings along the Chicago/Park Ridge border that straddle the boundary between the two cities (and thus the boundaries of telqi, cable providers, natural gas suppliers, and area codes); all but one of them (several apartment buildings and single-family dwellings, no businesses) have an address in one city or the other and probably the utilities follow suit. One house has two addresses, apparently with Illinois Bell phone service from its Chicago side but Northern Illinois Gas from its Park Ridge side.] The clue of having both telqi at a Dunkin' Donuts in Des Plaines led me to the one on Elmhurst Road, just south of Thacker (barely in IBT territory), there being none on Higgins (there is one on Higgins in Elk Grove Village, the next town west, but it is very deep into IBT-Land). It had two Illinois Bell paystations and no COCOTs. However, the Dunkin' Donuts on Oakton, just west of Lee, well within Centel's satrapy, had almost what Jeff described: a Centel payphone in the vestibule and two paystations on the back wall, of which one was a second Centel coin phone and the other was a COCOT in a housing that resembles IBT payphones. Why any informed person would use the COCOT, except in an extreme emergency with both the Centel phones in use, is beyond me. Even then, there are a very large number of other retailers at Oakton and Lee, many of whom have Centel payphones at their establishments. I'll let the Digest readership know if I spot anything telephonically odd at the other Dunkin' Donuts in Des Plaines (at Rand and Miner) next time I'm in its vicinity. The recent increases in gasoline prices have cut seriously into my joyriding. David Tamkin Box 7002 Des Plaines IL 60018-7002 708 518 6769 312 693 0591 MCI Mail: 426-1818 GEnie: D.W.TAMKIN CIS: 73720,1570 dattier@ddsw1.mcs.com