wb8foz@mthvax.cs.miami.edu (David Lesher) (12/09/89)
If you REALLY want to raise your blood pressure, try calling Cuba.
Here's the procedure:
loop n=1 to 3E8
call 1-700-460-1000
get announcment in Spanish
hang up
next n
(Get recording in English, go back to line 1.)
Get ATT operator after several hours of above
give him/her #s
{s}he dials
call aborts, or answers dead or any of 100 things,
ATT keeps trying.
(It is a big help to be calling a location with many
trunks, as a busy sends you to line 1, again)
Call answers, with at least one-way audio. Try and converse.
Patience please, as you are in a conference call with about
thirty other conversations, most only about 6 db. down from
you, much less the other end.
Hang up.
BTW, to get credit for a call that didn't go through, you must get
that 700 operator again.
When you are there, it isn't much better. The 4 wire 75 baud 20ma data
circuit was down. After three days, the telco man showed up at site.
His first move was to call his test board. To do that, he had to find
a working outgoing trunk. Since only 3 or 4 of 20 work on any day,
this was a bit of a problem. Now his butt set consisted of a 300
series handset with braided insulation cord. No dial. No network I
could see.
He looked for a trunk on the protector with it. Since some were
ringing, he jumped a lot. When he got one, he dialed by banging his
pliers on the protector terminal. After 15 minutes of this, I loaned
him my Buttinski. This took a translator to explain the Monitor/Talk
switch. After many calls, he got through to the board (I always knew
that redial on a butt set should be an option) When I left a day
later, they were still working on it.
In India, more than 30 languages are in regular use, and no more than
40% of the people speak the most common. This according to a friend of
mine from there.
I supect that Cairo is even worse than Havana. About 10 years ago, I
remember reading that somehow the PTT swapped President Sadat's line
with that of the local UPI office. (oops!) After MONTHS of attempting
to get this fixed, Sadat and UPI gave up and just traded numbers.
A host is a host & from coast to coast...wb8foz@mthvax.cs.miami.edu
no one will talk to a host that's close..............(305) 255-RTFM
Unless the host (that isn't close)......................pob 570-335
is busy, hung or dead....................................33257-0335
[Moderator's Note: I tried calling 1-700-460-1000 Friday evening
several times using my default carrier, AT&T. I kept getting
intercepted locally, right here from AT&T in Chicago. ('cannot be
completed as dialed, please check the number and dial again...') It
never moved passed that point. Are you sure you have the right number?
Then I tried 10222-1-700-460-1000 and 10333-1-700-460-1000. These rang
several times, but both eventually cut into their respective carrier's
intercept messages, telling me the same thing, and to call customer
service for assistance. PT]