[comp.dcom.telecom] What Are "Cable Addresses"?

Rich Zellich <zellich@stl-07sima.army.mil> (08/17/90)

Does anyone remember the "Paladin" TV western series?

His business card read "Wire PALADIN, San Francisco" - it was a few
years after the series ended that I found out what that really meant.

larry@uunet.uu.net> (08/22/90)

In article  <10932@accuvax.nwu.edu> TELECOM Moderator writes:

> [Moderator's Note: Cable addresses are nothing more than shorthand for
> the entire telex address. They were devised many years ago by Western
> Union as a sort of precurser to what we call 'speed dial' today, or
> 'abbreviated dialing'. Except, you really did not dial anything. You
> merely passed the cable address to the Western Union agent/operator,
> who had a lookup table of addresses versus telex numbers. They were
> used as advertising gimmicks, and ways to easily remember long
> numbers.

	Cable addresses are still used today, although telex traffic
is, in general, declining due to better and lower cost international
direct dialing.  FAX is rapidly replacing telex.

	Cable addresses are coordinated in the U.S. by the Central
Bureau for Registered Addresses in New York City.  There is an annual
fee for maintaining the cable address registration.  A telex directed
to a cable address gets routed to the telex number associated with the
cable address.  I believe there may be other delivery options, but I
am only familiar with routing to an existing telex number.

	Cable addresses are often chosen for mnemonic significance.
The cable address for my organization is "RECOGNIZE".  Clever, huh?
 :-) If you send to our cable address, it will come in on our telex
line furnished by RCA Global Communications (now MCI).  We get very
little cable and telex traffic these days, probably 5% of what we got
10 years ago, since most international communications now arrive via
FAX.

	My favorite cable address is that of a law firm in Chicago
which I have used as patent counsel on certain matters: Kinzer, Plyer,
Dorn & McEachran.  Their cable address is "ELECTRIFY".  They get quite
a bit of international traffic, and that cable address is not easily
forgotten!


Larry Lippman @ Recognition Research Corp.
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