Stephen Sprunk wrote:

PBX trunks aren't numbered.

If outbound trunks aren't numbered, how does ANI work?

writes:

The letter/number matchup on US dials/keypads has been the same since
letters were introduced in the 1920s.

I understand that historically Britain used a different matchup.
Thus, when cellphones came out with the US matchup, there was some
sort of 'conversion' between historical British practice and modern
units. That's what I'm trying to put into perspective.

From what I remember, letters had disappeared from most landline phones long
before mobile phones began to appear. One of the reason 1-HELLO-WORLD
style business numbers never happened here.

There are letters on payphones, but these now follow the US/Mobile
pattern.

Phil

On Apr 3, 3:46*pm, wrote:

Nobody seems to have mentioned New Zeeland, where the 0 is in the same
place, but the other digits run clockwise round the dial, so the 5 is
also in the same place, but all of the other digits are different.
The mechanism is the same as on a normal dial, so that dialing a digit
n generates 10-n pulses.

The above was one of the challenges when international direct distance
dialing was introduced.

Would it be correct to say that when DTMF (Touch Tone) came out
everyone used the same frequencies world wide?

On Apr 3, 3:45*pm, Stephen Sprunk wrote:

It amazes me that dedicated outward trunks of a PBX get dialable
numbers even though no on ever calls them.

PBX trunks aren't numbered. *However, key systems ("KTS"), which many
people mistakenly call PBXes, use normal POTS lines, not trunk circuits.
*Some telcos had the ability to give multiple POTS lines the same
number, but others apparently did not--and I'm not sure how recently
that came about.

Many large PBX outward trunks are numbered with a regular phone
number.




They should get specially
identified numbers (eg in the 1nn-xxxx series) so they don't waste
addressable numbers.

YXX exchanges are reserved for internal network purposes (eg. billing);
they _can't_ be assigned to customer circuits, even though it's now
possible to dial them in areas with 10-digit local calling.

It doesn't matter what specific coding is used, the point is that they
shouldn't waste dialable numbers on lines no one would ever call.
They could assign some sort of special billing/maintenance code to
such lines.

On 31-Mar-12 19:17, wrote:
On Mar 31, 12:30 pm, Stephen Sprunk wrote:
Worse, some carriers do not present _any_ sort of prefix for Caller ID,
so int'l calls come in _looking like_ domestic calls. For instance, I
remember a call from a former employer's Brussels office, which had 10
digits and was displayed on my phone's screen as (322) xxx-xxxx. I
happen to know area code 322 was reserved* and realized it must have
been from somewhere in Europe, but most Americans wouldn't--and they
wouldn't know how to return that call if they missed it.

These days, many people simply press a "dial caller" button without
bothering to listen to a message or know who the caller is. This
leads to fraud, as you describe.

In the above case, if I attempted to return the call, it would have
failed because there is no area code 322. The Caller ID was _not_
presented as +322... or 011322... .

Another carrier presents NANP calls as 1..., but notice the lack of +;
they have the same problem with int'l Caller ID--but I'd be more likely
to notice the lack of a missing 1 for int'l numbers in that case.

My current carrier presents the number as 011322...; that's not as good
as +322..., but at least I can _return the call_.

It also leads to missed connections, since many callers are not using
a callable number. This would include people still using a pay phone,
people borrowing someone else's phone to make the call, people calling
form within a PBX served business*, or someone not at their regular
location.

That is the natural result of most people having Caller ID and cell
phones or DID numbers. It works _most_ of the time, so that's what most
people do _all_ of the time.

*A Centrex served line ususally gives the correct number, but a PBX
line usually gives merely the outgoing trunk that was used for the
call.

s/PBX/KTS/

PBXes typically get this right, though some are misconfigured (I suspect
deliberately, in particular cases) so the Caller ID comes through as
something like 001-001-0001. Why telcos allow this, I'll never understand.

In the old Bell System days, despite continuing advances in
automation, they always insisted on having Operators handy in case
help was needed.

Great customer service is a luxury of companies that don't have to
compete on price and are guaranteed a profit no matter how high their
expenses are, i.e. monopolies.

S

--
Stephen Sprunk "God does not play dice." --Albert Einstein
CCIE #3723 "God is an inveterate gambler, and He throws the
K5SSS dice at every possible opportunity." --Stephen Hawking

On Apr 3, 5:03*pm, Stephen Sprunk wrote:


In the old Bell System days, despite continuing advances in
automation, they always insisted on having Operators handy in case
help was needed.

Great customer service is a luxury of companies that don't have to
compete on price and are guaranteed a profit no matter how high their
expenses are, i.e. monopolies.

Except the companies are NOT providing price discounts. They're
getting away with non existent customer service because everyone is
doing it, and pocketing very nice comfortable profits. TODAY there
are more monopolies or _effective_ monopolies so the companies get a
way with it.

On Tue, 3 Apr 2012 19:37:36 +0100, Roland Perry
wrote:

In message , at 19:14:29 on
Tue, 3 Apr 2012, Charles Ellson remarked:
Fixed telephones outwith the "director
areas" (those like Greater London, Glasgow etc. which used the first
three letters of the exchange as the code and where the exchanges used
translation) did not have letters except by accident

I agree that (Inner) London Exchanges had three-letter abbreviations,
but very many provincial exchanges had two-letter abbreviations, plus an
index digit, as a mnemonic...

So Cheltenham was CH2 ( 0-24-2 )
Chichester was CH3 ( 0-24-3 )
Chester was CH4 ( 0-24-4 )
Chelmsford was CH5 ( 0-24-5 ) etc

Not "director areas" though. The style of the STD codes was fairly
deliberate (rather than e.g. a helpful aid for use within the GPO)

The codes I mention above are an example of the ones put in place before
STD, for GPO operators to better remember. They survived into STD
(subscriber) dialling.

Most STD codes were created that way but the majority of telephones
only had numbers on the dials thus actually implementing alpha-numeric
codes would have required all the dials in non-director areas to be
changed as only those in director areas (see below) were intentionally
provided with lettered dials (but being otherwise identical might have
been supplied as a substitute by the Stores Division).

but the future use of letters was dropped before STD working left the
trial stage.

I'm not sure what you are trying to say.

For example, is Chester a "director area"?

No. They were the areas with seven-digit (LLL nnnn) numbers where the
local exchange equipment used translating equipment including
electro-mechanical "directors" to translate the exchange codes into
the actual routing digits (from 1 up to 6) required to reach the
distant exchange and repeat the last four digits to that exchange. The
nominal areas were :-
London
Birmingham
Glasgow
Liverpool
Manchester

Edinburgh was a "pseudo-director" area; AFAIR although the numbering
suggested a director scheme it was actually a non-director area where
the exchanges generally ignored the first digit/letter and used the
two following digits to route the call with the subscriber dialling
the numerical digits direct into the destination exchange (effectively
an early linked numbering scheme).

On 01/04/2012 01:17, wrote:
On Mar 31, 12:30 pm, Stephen wrote:

Worse, some carriers do not present _any_ sort of prefix for Caller ID,
so int'l calls come in _looking like_ domestic calls. For instance, I
remember a call from a former employer's Brussels office, which had 10
digits and was displayed on my phone's screen as (322) xxx-xxxx. I
happen to know area code 322 was reserved* and realized it must have
been from somewhere in Europe, but most Americans wouldn't--and they
wouldn't know how to return that call if they missed it.

These days, many people simply press a "dial caller" button without
bothering to listen to a message or know who the caller is. This
leads to fraud, as you describe.

It also leads to missed connections, since many callers are not using
a callable number. This would include people still using a pay phone,
people borrowing someone else's phone to make the call, people calling
form within a PBX served business*, or someone not at their regular
location.

*A Centrex served line ususally gives the correct number, but a PBX
line usually gives merely the outgoing trunk that was used for the
call.


I'm not aware of any surcharged numbers other than the well-known
(within the NANP, at least) 900 and 976 numbers. There are several
countries in the NANP that charge ridiculous int'l toll rates for
numbers, hoping that clueless Americans can be enticed into dialing
them, but that's it. These were formerly all grouped into area code
809, but now they're spread among a dozen or so area codes, so it's more
difficult to avoid them without checking the number first.

It is now difficult the "check the number". Companies are
discouraging calls to the Operator, and are sometimes charging for
such inquiries. Some carriers (landline and long distance) don't even
have dial zero Operators and refer such calls to "customer service".

In the old Bell System days, despite continuing advances in
automation, they always insisted on having Operators handy in case
help was needed.

Returning to trains, the PATCO Lindenwold system, while automated,
always planned to have human backup readilly available in case the
machine failed. PATCO's motorman could operate the train in manual
mode if necessary, and centralized fare gate assistants could open
gates if needed.

I thought that PATCO's motormen already manually operated the train when
it was entering a terminal station.

Are there certain times when PATCO crews have to drive in manual, just
to stay in practice. There is such a requirment on the Central Line on
Sundays, IIRC.

Docklands Light Rail crews also have to drive in manual on Sunday mornings.

On 02/04/2012 14:43, wrote:
On Apr 1, 5:34 pm, wrote:

Are you finding that the inks which I pasted in don't work? I am, but
if I put the HTTP:// back in they do.

Yes, I got to it. Interesting stuff. thanks for sharing it.


Would you know if the British railway system ever had radio phones for
use by passengers as premier American trains did?

Also, at one time almost every US train station had a payphone, but
they are rare to find now. Some stations still have them mostly to
serve as an emergency phone (no charge to call police), though of
course one can still make a normal call. Overall, pay phones have
become rather rare in the US thanks to cell phones, and cheaper phone
rates.

Do British railway stations still have pay phones?


London Underground stations used to have pay phones, though no longer. I
can't understand why they would do that, however, because one cannot get
a signal on their mobile phones on the tube lines.

They also used to have to have Candbury's vending machines, though those
disappeared around 2006/07.

On Tue, 3 Apr 2012 13:38:30 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

On Apr 3, 3:46*pm, wrote:

Nobody seems to have mentioned New Zeeland, where the 0 is in the same
place, but the other digits run clockwise round the dial, so the 5 is
also in the same place, but all of the other digits are different.
The mechanism is the same as on a normal dial, so that dialing a digit
n generates 10-n pulses.

The above was one of the challenges when international direct distance
dialing was introduced.

Would it be correct to say that when DTMF (Touch Tone) came out
everyone used the same frequencies world wide?

SSMF4 seemed to have become the accepted standard in the UK by 1972,
see e.g.:-
http://www.britishtelephones.com/tsa4258.htm
but ISTR there used to be at least some subtle differences (avoiding
clashing with other MF signals) between US and UK MF telephones
although both would fit the current ITU specification.