jsol@bu-it.bu.edu (08/13/89)
They tend to do what they want, and what they can get away with. They are heavily intertwined with the legislature, such that local calling to Hartford has suddenly become popular. You can now call into from the Bradley Airport to Middletown, CT with only the use of one person's call forwarding in Hartford. My dad in West Haven has a New Haven exchange number, flat rate, for his business, that's something we don't have here. Basically if the toll tandem in your area doesn't support Equal Access (and for much of the state that is true), then you don't get 00. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if SNET is refusing to convert their #1 ESS's to #1A or #5 so they can implement this. Right now there is no room in the ESS1 address space for *any* *more* *coding* *regardless* of what it is they are coding for. Cambridge, MA had a #1 until just recently and they removed some code from the address space so they could add equal access. SNET was the first company to go all dial (they even supported the Woodbury Telephone Company and NY TEL (for Greenwich) to go dial just so they could say they were the first state with dial service universally. They paid for it by not being able to retire the step machines until a very long while into the ESS situation, and they bought barely enough equipment to support the ESS needs. They introduced ESS in my area by providing a new exchange for it and allowing people to change their number to it for a fee (of course). Those switches were highly experimental, and I actually crashed one of them without doing much. There are two "states" in Connecticut for telephone service. In Hartford, New Haven, New London, Bridgeport, Stratford (in fact the whole area near I-95 heading from New Haven to New York), and surrounding towns all have Equal Access (I think). I know SPRINT and MCI have access points in Hartford, and I know I dialed 950-1042 to get First Phone from a Newington pay phone, and 950-0777 also worked. Whether or not they have Equal Access by now is still a mystery to me. Newington runs a ess 2B switch (John Covert, correct me if I am really talking about a 2A -- I can never remember which of them are a local switch and which are a toll tandem). This switch is partly digital and partly analog. You hear loud clunks when you connect, but I digress. Mainly the thing stopping SNET from providing Equal Access besides the tariff (which they aren't doing diddly to achieve, and neither is SPRINT and MCI, they just don't think CT is worth it financially). They may have equal access and they may not, I just don't know. On the other hand, places like Canton, Simsbury, Enfield, Winsted, Columbia, Norwich (maybe), and all those other still-step or newly-converted-to-DMS or something exchanges will never have equal access. These towns are so small that they don't fill a prefix. I know of one prefix, 203-684 (Stafford Springs) which is fairly full (serves several towns), is still step by step, and doesn't have equal access. If you travel along i-84 to Boston from Hartford, you go Hartford, Rockville (203-871,2,5), Willimantic (there's a rest stop there now) Stafford Springs, then the Mass. border (Sturbridge, just converted to DMS or ESS5). If you get off at the very last exit (Union, CT) before the Mass border, and travel north, you will be in (413). The neat thing about that area is that it touches 3 area codes. Neither Mass. area code is local to 684. For years 684 was its own local calling area, and they dialed 4-digits to get each party. Now they are local to Rockville and Rockville is local to Stafford Springs. The summation of all this jibberish and reminiscing about CT is that 203-684 won't be converted for some time, and when they do convert it will likely be *after* the Willimantic toll center goes equal access, so they will have it. It's the Toll Centers that have to be converted. The Willimantic tandem probably still crossbar. The Hartford tandem is brand new. The New Haven tandem is still crossbar. You can hear the in-band signalling as the call is placed. Oh yeah, I just remembered something; the Waterbury toll tandem and local switching machine is now an ESS 5 (a BIG one). Watertown has 8 prefixes. That's a large town in CT. You judge. I don't even know where the ATT point of presence is. I think it's in Hartford. Exchanges like New Haven and Hartford serve several communities. New Haven serves Westville, Woodbridge, Hamden, New Haven proper, East Haven, West Haven, and Orange. All these areas have seperate switching centers with no more than 10 prefixes each (most have 3 or 4), and they have the same local calling area. Anyway, hope this answers some of the questions. I know something about Connecticut Phone Politics, but not everything :-(. --jsol