davidb@pacer.uucp (David Barts) (07/30/90)
> Mention of the photo of JFK's desk brings a piece of trivia to mind. > FTS, the Federal Telephone System, the large disjoint system that {in > theory!} provides intra-government telecommunications, came about > because at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, he could not, at a > critical juncture, get a dial tone! Actually, FTS stands for Federal Tieline System. And what is a tieline? A tieline is a piece of substandard quality string that when used to connect two soup can `telephones' has broken repeatedly and has had to be tied together in numerous places :-). Seriously, though I clearly remember the name from when I worked for a government contractor and had the misfortune of having to use FTS when I made long-distance calls in the course of my job. I'm sure many readers know what a tieline really is, so we'll find out. An FTS phone will have both a normal area code and phone number (that can be called like any other phone) and a seven-digit FTS number. The last four digits of the FTS and normal phone numbers have always been the same on every phone I've seen (505-667-8463 or FTS 843-8463). DOE Richland uses 509-373 and 509-376, which correspond to FTS 440 and 444 (I think 373 is 440, but I don't remember for sure). Dialing from one government site to another requires only seven digits after accessing the FTS dial tone. FTS can also be used to call non-FTS phones if you dial the area code and phone number, in which case I was told that FTS would route the call as far as it could, then use a conventional carrier for the remainder of the connection. My first experience with FTS was when the contractor called me up to do a phone interview before deciding to spend money on a plane ticket to fly me out for a real interview. The audio quality was atrocious -- definitely the worst-sounding long-distance call I had heard up to that time. There was lots of static on the line, the other party's voice was so faint, I could barely hear what he was saying. To make matters worse, the circuit sounded like it had a VOX on it that was set with the threshold too high, so I only heard about half of each word "Ello, <hiss> s <crackle> thi <hiss> ster <hiss, click, clunk> Arts?" instead of "Hello, is this Mister Barts?". Naturally, it would be impossible to conduct a meaningful interview with such a bad connection, so I told my prospective boss to call back. He said that FTS always sounded this way, so it probably wouldn't make a difference but he'd hang up and try again just the same. He was right, no improvement. The interview proceeded like this: he asks me a question, I YELL "What? Please repeat that!" into the receiver. After four or five iterations, I would have heard enough pieces of the question to piece it together, then I'd YELL the answer back to him. Strangely, the abysmal audio quality only extended one way; he could hear me fine. After I got hired, the same thing would happen to me in reverse, I'd be able to hear the called party okay (never clearly, but okay), but I'd have to YELL to make myself heard on the other end to get the called party to hear me. Using FTS always made me feel like I was in a 1930's black-and-white movie (the scene where the guy in a phone booth is yelling the same thing over and over trying to get his message across the country). I ended up pasting a message on my phone saying "Think FTS -- YELL it don't say it!" (thankfully, I didn't place LD calls from work very often -- only a few times a week). Back to the phone interview. I'd have been a bit more understanding of the poor quality of the FTS connection had it been between two places that don't use much FTS, and so have limited FTS service, but the contractor was at Richland, WA (a major DOE site), and at the time I was living with my parents in Los Alamos, NM (another major DOE site). I also got bad connections after being hired when calling from Richland to the Washington, DC area. If JFK had FTS in his office, he'd probably decide to keep on pushing buttons trying to place his call through a commercial LD carrier. Sure, it may take an extra ten minutes to get a connection, but he'd waste that much time repeating himself on FTS and risk being misunderstood. "You said `fire', Mister President? Okay..." "NO!! HOLD YOUR FIRE!!" "Right, `FIRE!'" "NO!! DON'T FIRE!!" "Firing now!" > I seem to recall that FTS started out with four underutilized CO's > serving as tandems. DC's is in the middle of Maryland somewhere. And now it utilizes CO equipment retired from Liberia, Bangladesh, and Cambodia after the equipment reached such an age as to no longer provide the quality of service customers in those nations are accustomed to. :-) David Barts Pacer Corporation, Bothell, WA davidb@pacer.uucp ...!uunet!pilchuck!pacer!davidb
schweige@cs.nps.navy.mil (Jeffrey M. Schweiger) (07/31/90)
In article <10256@accuvax.nwu.edu> davidb@pacer.uucp (David Barts) writes: X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 531, Message 1 of 8 |If JFK had FTS in his office, he'd probably decide to keep on pushing |buttons trying to place his call through a commercial LD carrier. |Sure, it may take an extra ten minutes to get a connection, but he'd |waste that much time repeating himself on FTS and risk being |misunderstood. "You said `fire', Mister President? Okay..." "NO!! |HOLD YOUR FIRE!!" "Right, `FIRE!'" "NO!! DON'T FIRE!!" "Firing |now!" |> I seem to recall that FTS started out with four underutilized CO's |> serving as tandems. DC's is in the middle of Maryland somewhere. |And now it utilizes CO equipment retired from Liberia, Bangladesh, and |Cambodia after the equipment reached such an age as to no longer |provide the quality of service customers in those nations are |accustomed to. :-) David Barts implies that the Federal Telecommunications System (FTS) remains much the same today as it was when he was first introduced to it. While I never used the old FTS (being a separate system from Autovon), with the implementation of FTS 2000, commercial LD carriers (AT&T and Sprint, I believe) are handling the LD service. Maybe one of the other Telecom Digest readers can give us a description of FTS 2000 and how it works. Jeff Schweiger Standard Disclaimer CompuServe: 74236,1645 Internet (Milnet): schweige@cs.nps.navy.mil
goldstein@carafe.enet.dec.com (Fred R. Goldstein) (08/01/90)
In article <10256@accuvax.nwu.edu>, davidb@pacer.uucp (David Barts) writes... >Actually, FTS stands for Federal Tieline System. And what is a >tieline? A tieline is a piece of substandard quality string that when >used to connect two soup can `telephones' has broken repeatedly and >has had to be tied together in numerous places :-). The Federal Telephone System was established in the 1960's and was based on two AT&T tariffs. One, Telpak, was a bulk discount for leased channels. (It was abolished when the FCC ruled that private lines could be shared. The discount worked because you bought blocks of 60 or 240 channels; most customers didn't use them all up.) The other, which provided the switching, was called CCSA (something Switching Arrangement). In its day, CCSA was the state of the art for private voice networks. CCSA originally used old CO switches, reprogrammed for the private seven-digit numbering plan. Later AT&T moved the FTS onto electronic switches. Note though that of the 52 or so FTS switches in the '70's, only a handful were four-wire. The rest were two-wire (mostly 1ESS) which of course were prone to echo. AUTOVON is all four-wire, of course; its tariff is called SCAN (Switched Circuit Access Network). Nowadays FTS is being replaced by FTS-2000. In classic procurement style, the GSA (under Congressional pressure) decided not to give the FTS procurement to one vendor. Instead it's a 60:40 split between AT&T and Sprint. So there are two FTS networks, with a few links between them. At least the circuits and switches are digital. Kids, don't try this at home! Fred R. Goldstein goldstein@carafe.enet.dec.com or goldstein@delni.enet.dec.com voice: +1 508 486 7388
RAF@cu.nih.gov (Roger Fajman) (08/01/90)
FTS is much improved now that the new FTS 2000 system is in full operation, at least for voice. FTS 2000 is an all-digital system. Due to political considerations the contract was split into two parts and 60% was awarded to AT&T and 40% to Sprint. MCI lost out completely and is still mad about it. Anyway, now the voice quality (to my ear) is equal to commercial calls (I have MCI on my home phone). Also, I can make a long distance call in the middle of the afternoon without getting several trunk busy signals first. I usually use it to call commercial numbers. Rarely do I call other seven-digit FTS numbers. My agency, NIH (National Institutes of Health), is in the Washington, DC, area and is on the AT&T part of the system. By the way, the NIH phone book calls it the Federal Telecommunications System now. It's entirely possible that the meaning of the T may have changed over time. Roger Fajman Telephone: +1 301 402 1246 National Institutes of Health BITNET: RAF@NIHCU Bethesda, Maryland, USA Internet: RAF@CU.NIH.GOV Postmaster for NIHCU.BITNET and CU.NIH.GOV
dmr@csli.stanford.edu (Daniel M. Rosenberg) (08/02/90)
In <10272@accuvax.nwu.edu> schweige@cs.nps.navy.mil (Jeffrey M. Schweiger) writes: >David Barts implies that the Federal Telecommunications System (FTS) >remains much the same today as it was when he was first introduced to >it. While I never used the old FTS (being a separate system from >Autovon), with the implementation of FTS 2000, commercial LD carriers >(AT&T and Sprint, I believe) are handling the LD service. Maybe one >of the other TELECOM Digest readers can give us a description of FTS >2000 and how it works. Here at the Palo Alto Veterans Administration Medical Center, we have what we call FTS, and is probably FTS 2000. We access normal, local outside dialing through 9+number, FTS through 8+number. 9+ number won't take areacodes (even the nearby 408) but 8+ will only take area codes (and, I believe, FTS tie lines). One fine day I tried to raise an operator to make a credit card call. 8+0+10 digits raised someone who said "FTS Sprint." She said to make a credit card call, dial 0+areacode+number, which I had just done. Eventually someone here told me one simply didn't make credit card calls over FTS. In addition, the line quality is audible, but not good enough for using a 1200 baud or higher modem over long distances. Come to think of it, it is pretty much hopeless using a modem even to Stanford, a few hundred meters away. Our switch at the VA is a new Northern DMS-100 (or SL-100, or whatever they call it), and they just layed down new lines from the phones to the switch. But out FTS is better than the shouting and squawking described earlier. With the mediocre line quality, undocumented and ever-changing dialing instructions, and opaque operators, it's sort of like a giant COCOT. # Daniel M. Rosenberg // Stanford CSLI // Chew my opinions, not Stanford's. # dmr@csli.stanford.edu // decwrl!csli!dmr // dmr%csli@stanford.bitnet
RAF@cu.nih.gov (Roger Fajman) (08/03/90)
FTS is only for long distance calls, so poor connections between the Palo Alto VA Medical Center and Stanford can't be blamed on it. Poorly documented dialing instructions are not the fault of FTS either, since it's up to the agency to distribute dialing instructions. They may vary from agency to agency, depending on the phone system installed. As for constantly changing dialing procedures, the dialing instructions for FTS here at NIH have been the same since I first started work here in 1969. We did have to change the way we dialed internal extensions when NIH went to Centrex back in the 70s. But that was not caused by and did not affect FTS. We may have to change the way we dial if the procurement for a digital PBX for NIH ever gets done. Anyway, the one problem mentioned that can be blamed on FTS is the operator's giving incorrect instructions for how to make a credit card call. The Palo Alto VA Medical Center may well have a phone system that works like a COCOT, but it's not the fault of FTS.