clark@ssc-vax.UUCP.UUCP (05/12/87)
*** line eater biscuit ***
Where has everyone gone??? I have not gotten any news from this
group in over three weeks !!! Is someone broke down or has everyone
left town? Oh, I get it. Everyone has stopped telecommunicating. :-)
There has been some talk in this group lately about the need for
adding more digits to the public phone numbers because we will soon
run out of unused numbers. So, I was thinking about how the phone
system is handled here at the big 'B' and came up with some
questions and comments:
Background; Most all the phones in the company are on pbx or
centrex, with more going to pbx everyday.
Like many large companies there are plants and offices
that are spread over the entire area, using up many
thousands of phone numbers in many different public
exchanges. ( apporx. 40,000 different numbers )
The plants with pbx equipment are linked through leased
lines to all the other plants serviced with similar
equipment, making a 'private' phone network that
operates in parallel with the public network. ( This
'private' network uses 'public' numbers. i.e anyone on
the public network can call directly to my desk from the
public network using a regular seven digit number. )
So, one of my questions is, " How many other companies have there
phone networks setup in a similar way? If the answer is 'lots', then
it would seem that there's a good case to make these 'semi-private'
networks truely private and in the process, free up a lot of numbers
in the public network.
So how would people on the public network call people on a private
network? Well, one way that comes to mind is to run the private
network like many small and medium companies run there phone systems;
( many small firms with a pbx, a single number on the public network
is called that gets an operator at the company and then tells the
operator to whom they wish to speak.)
This could work the same way a large company as follows:
There would be a few access numbers (seven digit) allocated in the
public network to get onto the private network. From there, a
special dial tone or recorded message could instruct the caller to
enter additional digits that would then ring through to the person
they with to talk to. The big hole I see in this sort of thing is
that it would work great for me calling on my tone phone connected
to an ECO. However, there may be serious problems if someone were to
call from say New York state where the COE might be some old
cross-bar type thing and the instrument a rotory dial type.
And even if such a system could be set in place, would the savings
in numbers on the public network be enough? Or would all the
available numbers still be used up soon anyway?
Some of you in the know might comment further on this...
Roger Swann UUCP: uw-beaver!ssc-vax!clark
As usual, I disavow any knowledge of my actions.