Telephones... then and now

[ultrarunner]

Yep... it looks like the advantage of using all ATT as a single source no longer exists.

Back in the day the Telephone Company was the epitome of science with Bell Labs and the staff to make it the most reliable telcom in the world... 24/365...

 

[k0ua]

Yep... it looks like the advantage of using all ATT as a single source no longer exists.

Back in the day the Telephone Company was the epitome of science with Bell Labs and the staff to make it the most reliable telcom in the world... 24/365...

I am out of the "loop" now, but from what I hear the entire network is deteriorating. The telco's are not putting money into their cable plant, nor into any of the wireline services. They are just interested in getting fiber to the cell towers, and trying to sell data bandwidth. They are not interested in CPE any more or the services that feeds it. (like your T1). I am hearing this from several sources now. I think telco is dying a more rapid death than many predicted. It served me well for many decades, but thank God I am out.

 

[ultrarunner]

I keep hearing the copper is dieing but what about the millions of poles drops across America?

The central office is about 2 blocks away... when I was a kid they added another whole floor to the building and underground fuel tanks with pipes that go under the street to keep the gensets running.

One tech told me the building is almost vacant with all the hardware on one floor now.

 

[Industrial Toys]

Man is quickly rushing to put all his eggs into one (IP) basket.

 

[hawkeye08]

Agree, they are not maintaining the old. We had wiring for 5 landlines when we built in '93. Had 3 lines active at one time, worked well. As more houses were built in our area, the quality got worse (noise on line, static, etc). When we finally gave up our last landline just over a year ago, it was so bad you really couldn't use it for a phone call or fax. We moved our number over to ATT wireless home phone that works well for voice, but we would have to go to town if we needed to fax something. Most of the time we can scan and email, but I know there are still some that require a fax.

Ultra, hope you get the system back up and stable at the hospital..

 

[ultrarunner]

It's been over 12 hours and no issues...

Looks like swapping the T1 NIU/Smartjack did the trick with a circuit that was recently abandoned.

 

[kcflhrc]

When I came to Sprint in 1998 from AT&T we had 45 Business Techs. All we did was install and maintain PBX's and Key Systems. Mostly Nortel but some Fujitsu also. There are currently 3 of us left and not enough work to keep 1 busy. I'm currently doing Fiber to the premise installs, business and residential. However, 99 percent of the households in our market here in Kansas are still on the good old copper cable. DSL over copper has made huge advancements so it stands to reason that using the old cable is much more profitable than plowing in new fiber. You repair the copper cable as cheaply and quickly as possible and move on to the next disaster.

 

[Shaneard]

Our preacher had hip replacement surgery a few months ago. His granddaughter was in the room afterwards visiting (she's 6) and the phone rang, he ask her to answer it. She didn't know what to answer, she had never seen one with a cord on it!!! We saw a guy at church last year and I nudged my wife and pointed to his phone and said look! It was a cell phone with a pull up antenna, haven't seen one of them in years!

 

[k0ua]

Our preacher had hip replacement surgery a few months ago. His granddaughter was in the room afterwards visiting (she's 6) and the phone rang, he ask her to answer it. She didn't know what to answer, she had never seen one with a cord on it!!! We saw a guy at church last year and I nudged my wife and pointed to his phone and said look! It was a cell phone with a pull up antenna, haven't seen one of them in years!

I saw a show that featured some children shown objects from the past. One was a rotary dial desk phone (500 ITT type). The children literally had no idea what it was or what its function was. They were sort of intrigued by it, but had no clue to what it was.

 

[hawkeye08]

Our grand daughter whose is 2 1/2 yo has a play kitchen (that we saved from when her Momma was a toddler) that has a wall phone to one side, with push button dialing and corded handset. She was not shown how or what it was, just picked up the handset, held it to the side of her face and starting talking... We don't have any phones that like that, all ours are cordless so not sure where she learned it.. It sure is fun to watch them learn... I was thinking she would never see a music CD or Sony walkman that our kids used when middle/high school age.., but then her Mom found some CDs she wanted her to listen to and got out the boombox to play them, it did not work so she pulled out the old Sony walkman and put fresh batteries in, plugged in headphones and music happened. Grand daughter was proudly carrying it around dancing and listening to her music...