Posted on 03/04/2006 10:22:21 PM PST by HAL9000
Yep and I also know that the technology to make calls cheaper was being installed nation wide just about the time of the split too. The new switches were more or less self running and cost was cut. Administrative cost used to eat up a lot of billing cost. Now it's all done by computer. The split didn't bring the change but rather the change was coming anyway. I haven't paid for a long distance call in several years. I use the cell for that but actually I still do pay as they add it into the service plan.
Expanded service areas for local calls came about mainly due to billing issues. It was cheaper to raise everybody's rates a small bit that do the billing.
Yea I know what you mean. We built our home security and nobody knew what the heck it was. Here's a better one. Remember the dummy jack pins that they used to make or break a circuit? Usually white and went into what looked like a head phone jack? The switch had anywhere from 4-10 contacts I think. We wired our car coils through them to ground. When you parked the car you pulled out the pin and took it with you. Thieves looked for toggle switches :>} We never had one stolen that was wired like that.
Again like I told someone else try that with your power company and see how screwed up things get. The cost wasn't that much actually as most of them were on service calls. As big as Bell used to be even in the 1950' & 60's & 70's when catastrophic events hit they had to pull crews from other cities to go help out. And there is the maintenance issue. Even buried cable has problems. The cable only has so many aviable pairs to use. I do think this much was lost from the split. I think most places would be on fiber optic now in the cities had the split not happened.
You are enjoying what Bell put in 20 years ago for the most part and not much in the way of advanced technology is going on.
One thing that revolutionized phone service especially in the suburbs and rural are was the development of a small Central Office of sorts called a SLICK System. Most are now at least 20 years old. I live out in the sticks about 12 miles from the central office and on dial up I can get 49 K connects because of the SLICK. But for this to work the cables have to be kept up. The work is not the quality it used to be. How many pieces of Bell equipment do you see now with covers missing etc? The last time my dads line went out they ran a drop wire along the top of a fence row and turned it over to the cable department. They never showed up. I had a tree laying on the cable on my road and called them a few times over several years. They never came. The work from old MA Bell for the most part was quality work.
If you have ever worked in a profession that deals with answering trouble calls you know that equipment failures and other such happenings can not be scheduled. That also meant having workers willing to answer their phone at 2:00am for a call out to go service critical data line services. IF things don't change in the next few years the national phone service grid which in most places is owned by Bell will be in the same condition as Cali's power grid.
One more thing you probably didn't know. MA Bell has to run service to anyone requesting it. They have to eat the cost of getting service up to the home even if it's going up a mountain side with no prior service and for that one customer. As such it is a utility. But then again the local utility can charge you at least for the poles. Bell can't even do that. I should be so lucky the cable company would have to do the same and I finally can get off dial up.
Or a judge with a grudge.
Yep and it's ridiclous too. Some things come easy enough to find and some can take a while. Also the I/R has to in many cases wait on other vendors, central office, Etc.
No arguement from me. My dad retired craftsman. He was lucky and when ESS hit he went outside. They never offered him early retirement at any point. Many he worked with were offered it though. He stuck it out after the split till he was 65. That was about 13 years ago and not one person he worked with in his work group is still there. This was in a city as big as Tuscon probably bigger.
When strikes hit I saw my dad when it was over. The union made a mistake early in his career of threatening him to strike or else. He got sorted irked at them and did the or else the next 40 years. He didn't strike till he went back outside and even then he wasn't union. The first step supervisors loved it also. They got busted back to craft and made a lot more money because they got paid overtime. Most of the time my dad made more a year than his boss.
Not exactly. There are a lot of great, dedicated, hard-working people at SBC. The guys who are working in the trenches, on the poles, etc. are superb. But the leadership - Ed Whitacre and his gang in San Antonio - should be locked away.
BTW, Hal, there WAS no recession.
So much for 'end of discussion'.
I do remeber the dummy jack's ,saw a couple once, my father quick the pole climing a few yrs before I was born, work out of a CO then in downtown L.A.
People would not believe the amount of switching equipment a Central Office had in it. I would say the ones in LA were massive. The ones who maintained them were true craftsmen. These guys and women weren't circuit board swappers. They had to find the exact problem even down to a 50 contact relay with one contact sticking. Then they had to replace it one wire at a time all 100 of them IIRC. By the time they retired they were half deaf too LOL.
The call was from Kentucky to Florida. No transatlantic. Probably microwave. Still, indicative of poor customer service of a monopoly.
I started with Pacific Telephone in 1980 as a Toll COE (first level line manager) and moved to the technical track (D22->D44) before leaving in 1991. I could have taken a D55 (equivalent to a division manager) to stay, but I saw better prospects outside PacBell. My annual income has more than doubled since 1991 and the work at my new company is much more interesting.
Yeah. Bell Atlantic was a good company. It's been dead for years, and it ain't coming back.
Living in relatively dense area like BG/Warren County, I didn't realize how slow that phone technology has been in evolving in many areas, until I took my current job. With all the EBT customers I have on my route, got to call the vouchers in for approval, and in Larue and Green county both there are quite a lot of areas that still only have pulse dialing (no touch tone service) requiring me to use my cell phone to call the vouchers in for approval.
Even in NYC, where my grandma lives, there are a lot of old rotary pulse phones. My grandma insists on paying upwards of $50 per month for a rotary pulse phone in her flat in Brooklyn rather than get cheaper service with a modern phone. And that's with Bell Atlantic there. Note that $10 dollars per month in my grandma's case is for the phone itself, not the line, the phone...
Your grandmother would save a bunch by owning her own instrument and using touchtone. The new policy of stopping responsibility at the "network interface" is also an issue for many people. The wiring inside the house beyond the network interface is entirely the responsbility of the customer now. Under the original Bell System, the phone company maintained responsibility for that wiring too.
That was in 2001, I don't know if my aunt and uncle or mom was able to rip that POS out of the wall and put a touch tone phone, let alone her own phone period, in place. I had to go to pay phone while there to use phone card to call my then g/f.
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