johnl@harvard.harvard.edu (John R. Levine) (06/21/89)
While talking to my cousin who runs an independent telco in rural Vermont, he
introduced me to Party Line Attack Ladies, an aspect of telephone practice not
heretofore described here.
In Vermont, the cheapest service you can order is four-party, and many of my
cousin's customers do order it. Traditionally, a four-party line consisted of
a single loop of wire running to a neighborhood with four houses in that
neighborhood wired in parallel. Nowadays, though, the outside plant wiring is
in most cases private line, i.e. each customer has a separate physical loop
back to the exchange. To make up the party lines, he ties four loops together
at the CO. This has a variety of advantages for him -- nearly all of his
four-party customers do in fact have four parties on the line so they're not
getting better service than they're paying for, and it's much easier to
diagnose line problems, change peoples' service, and rearrange the four-line
groupings as needed.
It also means that his costs for four-party and private line service are the
same even though the rates for private lines are higher (four-party probably
costs him slightly more since an operator has to ask for the caller's number
for toll calls.) He'd naturally rather have people order and pay for private
lines. So he takes advantage of Attack Ladies, local ladies who make extensive
use of their party line phones and have strong opinions about people who want
them to get off the line to make their own calls. One per line is all that's
required. When a customer decides to go private, the modern exchange equipment
allows my cousin to put another client on to the same line with the Attack
Lady without needing to rewire or change phone numbers.
He assures me that this is standard practice in the independent phone
business. I don't doubt it. He'd prefer that the state get rid of four-party
service and implement some sort of low-use minimum cost private line service
instead.
--
John R. Levine, Segue Software, POB 349, Cambridge MA 02238, +1 617 492 3869
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Massachusetts has 64 licensed drivers who are over 100 years old. -The Globe