morris@jade.jpl.nasa.gov (Mike Morris) (09/21/89)
klb@lzaz.att.com (K.BLATTER) writes: >Also, most people are familiar with this service as radio stations >often use this service -- especially stations that have large broadcast >areas. I remember growing up and when the radio station would have >a contest, they would list six or seven numbers that listeners could >call into to win. While each of these numbers was from a different >geographical area, they all terminated at the radio station. LA has most of it's FM station on a 5,000' mountain so both the AM and the FM has excellent coverage - LA county has 2 complete area codes (818 and 213) and pieces of 2 more (714, 805). Many of the radio station also cover portions of San Bernadino and Riverside counties (area code 619). A while back (pre the 213-818 split) I noticed that more and more stations were giving out 213-520 numbers for dial-in. After the split, I noticed that they were giving out the same number as "dial 213-520-xxxx or 818-520-xxxx". Well, to make a long story short there is only one 520 exchange, but it can be accessed from both 818 and 213. A acquaintance in Pac Bell tells me that if they can get GTE to co-operate that they might be able to do the same thing with 714, only it would have to be something other than 520, as that is already in use in the city of Anaheim. It probably won't happen with 619 as that is north San Diego, and all of Riverside and San Bernadino, and many of the lower powered stations don't reach that far. My '84 Riverside book does not list a assignment for 619-520 however. I was told it was done at the (collective) stations request to lower the number of FX lines and hence the cost, but I kinda doubt that - Mike Morris UUCP: Morris@Jade.JPL.NASA.gov ICBM: 34.12 N, 118.02 W #Include quote.cute.standard PSTN: 818-447-7052 #Include disclaimer.standard cat flames.all > /dev/null
joe@mojave.ati.com (Joe Talbot) (09/22/89)
In article <telecom-v09i0391m03@vector.dallas.tx.us>, morris@jade.jpl.nasa. gov (Mike Morris) writes: > klb@lzaz.att.com (K.BLATTER) writes: > > LA has most of it's FM station on a 5,000' mountain so both the AM and > the FM has excellent coverage - LA county has 2 complete area codes > (818 and 213) and pieces of 2 more (714, 805). Many of the radio > station also cover portions of San Bernadino and Riverside counties > (area code 619). A while back (pre the 213-818 split) I noticed > that more and more stations were giving out 213-520 numbers for dial-in. > After the split, I noticed that they were giving out the same number > as "dial 213-520-xxxx or 818-520-xxxx". This works the same as 976, both area codes translate to the same thing. The 213/818 520 prefix is a "choke" prefix, designed to prevent Radio and TV station contest calling from disrupting the network. Typically only 2-4 trunks are available from each office. A special prefix does not appear to be needed, often, in smaller communities, a prefix and a single hundreds group function the same way. Examples: Colton (714) 431-5XXX, Phoenix used to be that way, maybe still is (602) 260. Other choke prefixes of note are: Chicago (312) 591-XXXX, San Jose (408) 575-XXXX, Orange County (714) 977-XXXX, San Francisco (415) 478-XXXX, San Diego (619) 570-XXXX. > Well, to make a long story short there is only one 520 exchange, but it > can be accessed from both 818 and 213. A acquaintance in Pac Bell tells me > that if they can get GTE to co-operate that they might be able to do the > same thing with 714, only it would have to be something other than 520, > as that is already in use in the city of Anaheim. It's really too bad that 520 in Anaheim didn't get used. The 520 prefix was already in service in LA years before 520 even got assigned. 520 in Anaheim has a whole bunch of big centrex/DID customers on it, no hope of any change. (One customer had a recording reminding callers to dial 213 before the number because of huge numbers of misdirected calls!). Note that Orange County has its own choke prefix (714) 977. > It probably won't happen with 619 as that is north San Diego, and all of > Riverside and San Bernadino, and many of the lower powered stations don't > reach that far. My '84 Riverside book does not list a assignment for > 619-520 however. The prefix 520 is not special. It just happens to be one of the last to be assigned because of its position on the Bellcore list. Prefixes that end in 0 are later to be assigned because of confusion with the letter O. > I was told it was done at the (collective) stations request to lower the > number of FX lines and hence the cost, but I kinda doubt that - Stations often are forced to pay foreign exchange and milage charges just to get service, because that service MUST be on a choke system. joe@mojave I finally changed my dumb signature. People were always telling me what a great signature I had.
macy@hal.uucp (09/22/89)
In article <telecom-v09i0391m03@vector.dallas.tx.us> Mike Morris <morris@jade. jpl.nasa.gov> writes: >X-TELECOM-Digest: volume 9, issue 391, message 3 of 9 >klb@lzaz.att.com (K.BLATTER) writes: >>Also, most people are familiar with this service as radio stations >>often use this service -- especially stations that have large broadcast >>areas. I remember growing up and when the radio station would have >>a contest, they would list six or seven numbers that listeners could >>call into to win. While each of these numbers was from a different >>geographical area, they all terminated at the radio station. >LA has most of it's FM station on a 5,000' mountain so both the AM and >the FM has excellent coverage - LA county has 2 complete area codes >(818 and 213) and pieces of 2 more (714, 805). Many of the radio >station also cover portions of San Bernadino and Riverside counties >(area code 619). A while back (pre the 213-818 split) I noticed >that more and more stations were giving out 213-520 numbers for dial-in. >After the split, I noticed that they were giving out the same number >as "dial 213-520-xxxx or 818-520-xxxx". Ah, but there are other reasons! Yes, folks, it's another of Macy's True Stories of Telephony (TM) We often had problems with radio/TV stations running contests and giveaways in my phone co. days...a real traffic engineering nightmare. Seems the heavy peak demand caused by everyone going off hook and dialing one exchange at once would bring the local tandems to their knees. There was even a ESS in one city I know of that would give up, shut down and re-IPL on an 85% (or therabouts) load. In the days before widespread ESS and CICS this could be a real problem. The solution devised back in the late 60's was to set up a special exchange in one switch, usually the downtown one, since it was a major tandem and most of the stations had their studios downtown. The outlying CO's (Central Office) would be set up with only a couple trunks available to the downtown tandem for this special dedicated exchange. The outlying CO's would then, if possible, be modified to give a regular 60 ipm busy for all trunks busy on this trunk group, as opposed to a standard 120 ipm (fast busy) or ATB recording. (This was a real hack job in some types of offices) The idea was to prevent the heavy peak from overloading the tandems and offices without sounding odd to the customers. By creating a bottleneck by limiting trunkage, the downtown tandem switch did not get buried (it was also modified to act the same way on calls originating within the downtown switch). The tariffs filed by telcos in most states allow numbers to be reassigned to customers at the telco's discretion. The telco went to all the stations and forced a number change and dedicated contest/request lines to be used by the stations. Stations not in the downtown exchanges were offered FX services. In some areas, these exchanges were consolidated accross area codes, such as L.A. In many areas special tarriffs were put into place to offer this high traffic response service at a special premium rate, because a large calling area was being delivered at local rates. This was done because 800 service could not be configured to deal with this problem at the time. With the new ESS machines in use, similar, but improved schemes are currently in use. This is complicated by the various types of older CO switches out there and uncooperative independant (non-Bell) telcos, often becouse they are not offered CICS channels by the Bell co. or their switch is too dumb. A recent problem occurred in Akron, Ohio not too long ago that justifies this design philosphy... Seems an older local station (WQMX 94.9) got bought, changed its format from elevator music to contempary rock and needed to build its listeners. Good old American marketing enters the picture...and the station widely advertises they are going to give away $10,000 to the 100th caller at 7:30 one designated morning. The number they advertise is a regular POTS number (with three line rotary hunt group). Now their broadcast coverage area includes Akron-Cleveland-Canton Ohio. Cleveland or Canton to Akron is an inter-LATA toll call. The effect of this promotion is: 1. Akron's University ESS switch (216-836,864,867,869,860) is brought to its knees. This is the switch that serves WQMX. It is completely no-tone for almost 20 minutes. 2. Several local tandems are thoroghly messed up. Akron's downtown Blackstone exchange ESS is overloaded for the first time in its history. Operation is erratic, at best. Many of the inter-LATA carriers use Blackstone as their closest Point of Presence to University central office. Blackstone's many Centrex customers are affected as well. 3. ATT, Sprint, MCI and others are overwhelmed by Cleveland to Akron calling. Also a record. 4. Somebody wins the money, eventually. 5. Nearly thirty minutes pass before the network recovers. Ohio Bell never knew what hit them. Statements in the newspaper to that effect the next day showed WQMX did not communicate its intentions to Ohio Bell and did not subscribe the tarriffed services for this use. WQMX widely advertised the promotion and it was noticed by some Ohio Bell personnel, but they did not think much of it at the time, and no prior arrangements were made. Needless to say, such facilites have been put into place recently. WQMX has been trying other stunts to attract listeners, but not this one again. And the public has its reassuring dial tone again. WQMX's latest stunt was a girl with a cellular phone standing in front of a billboard saying: I NEED A JOB! CALL ME: XXX-XXXX over a busy Akron freeway during morning rush hour. The idea was to get the girl, really a new morning jock just hired by the station, on other stations' live morning programs and then plug WQMX. This one gave the cellular co. some extra traffic, but did no harm, other than upset a couple of the other radio stations in the area. So much for telecom as a promotion tool... telemarketing anyone? FACT: Most central offices are engineered for around 10% maximum usage. That's right. 10% of you all, businesses and residences, get on the phone at once, in one CO, and look out. (This number varies with the type of switch and its engineering, but its a good, round number) This will also be declaimed by many Telcos, but thats the way it is. Well, I'll be back with more True Stories of Telephony another day... Regards to all, Macy Hallock fmsystm!macy@NCoast.ORG F M Systems, Inc. hal!ncoast!fmsystm!macy 150 Highland Dr. uunet!hal.cwru.edu!ncoast!fmsystm!macy Medina, OH 44256 Voice: 216-723-3000 X251 Disclaimer: My advice is worth what you paid for it. Alt.disclaimer: Your milage may vary. Biz.disclaimer: My opinions are my own. What do I know?
edg@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Edward Greenberg) (09/22/89)
In article <telecom-v09i0391m03@vector.dallas.tx.us> Mike Morris <morris@jade. jpl.nasa.gov> writes: >>Also, most people are familiar with this service as radio stations >>often use this service -- especially stations that have large broadcast >>areas. I remember growing up and when the radio station would have >>a contest, they would list six or seven numbers that listeners could >>call into to win. While each of these numbers was from a different >>geographical area, they all terminated at the radio station. I was paging through the Criss Cross Directory yesterday, and discovered that in the 408 area, the 575 prefix is used only for radio stations, and only for call-in's as well. It doesn't seem to matter where in San Jose the station is located, or if it's located out of area. My guess is that this is done so that massive promotions won't take out residence and business service when the number of incoming calls skyrockets. I remember when WNBC in New York went "Total Request!!!!!" Businesses and residents in mid-Manhattan were out of phone service, as CIrcle-6 was "tubed". (An air traffic control expression which stems from going 'down the tubes.') -edg Ed Greenberg uunet!apple!netcom!edg
tad@ssc.UUCP (Tad Cook) (09/24/89)
I think the reason that many radio stations have the same special prefix is so that the local telco can do selective blocking when they announce: "..be the 9th caller and win $10,000!". Without special prefixes, an announcement like this could cause major problems when calls from all over start heading for one CO. With the special prefix, an "intelligent network" can allow a limited number of calls from each originating office, and the rest can get locally generated "all trunks busy". Tad Cook tad@ssc.UUCP [Moderator's Note: Tell me about it! The Chicago Cubs World Series tickets went on sale Friday at 6 PM here, via Ticketron. They did *not* use any special prefix or traffic routing at first. By 6:01 PM, phones all over northern Illinois were sluggish, and experiencing delays in getting dial tone. By about 6:45 Bell employees had managed to re-route some of the traffic, but the mess wasn't totally under control until about 10:00 PM. PT]
morris@jade.jpl.nasa.gov (Mike Morris) (09/25/89)
I wrote...
%klb@lzaz.att.com (K.BLATTER) writes: (Regarding Foreign Exchange service)
%
%>Also, most people are familiar with this service as radio stations
%>often use this service -- especially stations that have large broadcast
%>areas. I remember growing up and when the radio station would have
%>a contest, they would list six or seven numbers that listeners could
%>call into to win. While each of these numbers was from a different
%>geographical area, they all terminated at the radio station.
%
%LA has most of it's FM station on a 5,000' mountain so both the AM and
%the FM has excellent coverage - LA county has 2 complete area codes
%(818 and 213) and pieces of 2 more (714, 805). Many of the radio
%station also cover portions of San Bernadino and Riverside counties
%(area code 619). A while back (pre the 213-818 split) I noticed
%that more and more stations were giving out 213-520 numbers for dial-in.
%After the split, I noticed that they were giving out the same number
%as "dial 213-520-xxxx or 818-520-xxxx".
%
%Well, to make a long story short there is only one 520 exchange, but it
%can be accessed from both 818 and 213.
%
%I was told it was done at the (collective) stations request to lower the
%number of FX lines and hence the cost, but I kinda doubt that -
Brian Kantor straightened me out...
From: brian@ucsd.edu (Brian Kantor)
Subject: Re: Prefix '520' For Los Angeles Radio Stations
All the radio stations in San Diego have a 570 prefix for their numbers.
That is done to limit the number of inter-CO trunks that can be tied up
whilst they are running one of their "the 91st caller wins two free
tickets to the moon" contests.
- Brian
Thank You.
Mike Morris UUCP: Morris@Jade.JPL.NASA.gov
ICBM: 34.12 N, 118.02 W
#Include quote.cute.standard PSTN: 818-447-7052
#Include disclaimer.standard cat flames.all > /dev/nulljohn@zygot.ati.com (John Higdon) (09/25/89)
In article <telecom-v09i0396m03@vector.dallas.tx.us>, joe@mojave.ati.com (Joe Talbot) writes: > Stations often are forced to pay foreign exchange and milage charges > just to get service, because that service MUST be on a choke system. The three stations I work with that have choke prefixes do not pay any mileage. One simply because the 575 is served out of AXminster, their local office. The other two had previously been served out of AXminster but moved about a half-mile over the line into ALpine. An appropriate tear here and an "offer" for some Pac*Bell editorializing there, and the charges magically vanished. I understand that another station in town, served out of 95 Almaden, has a bunch of 575 lines used for some promotion and they also do not pay any mileage. I'm not sure why (but there is someone on this system who *does* know--hint, hint.) Which reminds me of the stormy beginnings of the choke network in the SF Bay Area. (Oh no, here comes another story, Martha!) It was about 1966 and one of the rock 'n roll AM stations discovered contests (really give-aways). Technicians in the 95 Almaden office were noticing these instantaneous overloads of the trunks and the crossbar switching equipment. In 1966 it was ALL crossbar. It didn't take long to determine who was the culprit. Phone company people were faced with a problem. Obviously they couldn't design the network to handle that peak demand on an occasional basis, and yet they couldn't be faced with periodic shutdowns that also prevented emergency calls from being placed. One of the suggestions was to tell the radio station that they couldn't "abuse their telephone service" in that manner any longer upon pain of disconnection. The radio station couldn't see the problem. "We only have four lines for the contest. How can we possibly be causing any trouble?" Of course, they had no idea of the trouble caused when hundreds of calls were directed at one number. Trunks would become jammed with busy signals (or reorders when the busy tone trunks would fill up) and normal calls would be blocked. Looking at the problem, they decided upon creating a special exchange that would have limited trunking and not share trunks with any other prefix. That way, the special exchange could busy out without affecting any other service. Hence was born the choke network. But this is not the end of the story. In 1972, some DJ at the big 50,000 watt rocker "discovered" how the choke network worked. He was furious to find out that callers could actually be blocked from calling him. He created a major stink which spread to other radio stations and ended up with representatives from Pacific Telephone and all the area stations in a conference. The long and the short of it was that PacTel insisted that it had created the choke network as a "service" to the stations, explaining that the only alternative was "contest prohibition". They made their point, the DJ was put in his place, and as an offering of good will, the area engineers were treated to a grand tour of 95 Almaden, the downtown office. (For you locals, the DJ was Tom Campbell, who hosted "KLOK Talk", where this issue came up.) Even so, from time to time, some DJ suddenly discovers that when he dials the request lines from an office extension, it's busy (reorder) and no request lines are in use. I have a canned explantion that usually calms him/her down. John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 723 1395 john@zygot.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o !
sysop@pinn.uucp (09/28/89)
I read several messages about radio station's toll free phone lines
and I have some comments to add to the discussion.
I have lived here in South Florida for about 7 years now and have been
involved in broadcasting since I moved here. I used to be chief engineer of
a TV station down here and at the time we had some audience participation
shows on the air. This same discussion holds true for radio stations in the
area.
This area has always been known for its telephone contesting. That is,
people are told to be the thus and such caller and they win something.
This had caused exchange overload in a very highly concentrated area.
Normally the phone company would have said too bad, but since there are
several military establishments that feed off some of these key COs,
something had to be done. I don't know if this has been done in other parts
of the country, but ALL radio stations and TV stations that do any kind of
phone contesting have special lines installed here. All lines are part of the
550 exchange from South Miami through to West Palm Beach. These are called
"choke exchanges." As far as the caller in concerned, there is only one
number to call, beginning with 550. In each exchange area, this 550 number is
translated into a local exchange number and then FXed back to the station.
If memory serves, we actually had 4 different sets of FX lines. They were
Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, Deerfield and Palm Beach. We paid plenty for them!
What was interesting was these lines were specially translated at each CO
point, but were ordinary FX lines for outgoing purposes. I had them wired
up to our PABX so that I could make calls to any of these areas.
The reason they are called "choke exchanges" is that to prevent CO lockup,
only two calls from each exchange are allowed to go inter CO. The rest of
the calls get a local exchange reorder. Hence, the exchange chokes off the
calls before they can cause network overload. In theory, its a good idea,
but in practice there are problems. Since only two calls from each exchange
are allowed into the inter exchange network, if there are two stations
carrying on a contest at the same time, everyone trying to get into one
stations contest may block all calls from getting into the other stations
contest.
I hope you found this interesting.
Andy
{your favorite gateway}!codas!novavax!pinn!sysop
[Moderator's Note: Welcome to the Digest, Andy, and I hope you will become
a regular contributor. PT]jimmy@icjapan.uucp (Jim Gottlieb) (09/28/89)
In article <telecom-v09i0396m03@vector.dallas.tx.us> joe@mojave.ati.com (Joe Talbot) writes: >It's really too bad that 520 in Anaheim didn't get used. The 520 prefix >was already in service in LA years before 520 even got assigned. 520 in >Anaheim has a whole bunch of big centrex/DID customers on it, no hope >of any change. A friend of mine who works for a phone company (I refuse to call GTE "THE" phone company) told me several years back that the people in the L.A. division of Pac*Bell tried real hard to get the 714 people to agree to use 520 for their mass calling prefix. But they already had their 977 and didn't want to change it. That was stupid short-sightedness in my opinion, as that would have made life easier for many, including DJs, who would have been able to say, "In the 213, 818, or 714, dial 520-KQLZ" instead of the now-required awkward practice of having to give out two different numbers. On the matter of mass calling to ticket numbers, I know for a fact that Ticketron's numbers in the LA area, while being standard POTS lines, are programmed to choke in each switch, and probably in the tandems as well. This makes a lot more sense than the bill Congress passed requiring that auto-dialers not be capable of redialing a number more than 16 times (after they had just castigated the Japanese for similar stupid telecommunications rules). Jim Gottlieb (remote from Tokyo) _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ <jimmy@pic.ucla.edu> or <jimmy@denwa.uucp> or <attmail!denwa!jimmy> Fax: 011-81-3-239-7453 Voice Mail: 011-81-3-944-6221 ID#82-42-424
clements@bbn.com (10/03/89)
>If anyone is making a list, the "choke" exchange serving Atlanta is >404-741. And in Boston, it's 617-931-1xxx. Note: Only ONE thousand's group. That's few enough that smart exchanges actually might have a map of those 1000 numbers. Then they could allow a couple of calls to different numbers within the group at the same time, afor a little more inter-station fairness. Not likely, I guess. Bob Clements, K1BC, clements@bbn.com