Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!texsun!texbell!vector!telecom-gateway From: ima!johnl@harvard.harvard.edu (John R. Levine) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Two Apartments on One Telephone Line Message-ID: Date: 24 Jun 89 16:53:53 GMT Sender: news@vector.Dallas.TX.US Reply-To: "John R. Levine" Organization: Segue Software, Inc. Lines: 20 Approved: telecom-request@vector.dallas.tx.us X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@vector.dallas.tx.us X-TELECOM-Digest: volume 9, issue 212, message 4 of 8 In article mvac23!thomas@udel.edu writes: >[Moderator's Note: An 'extension phone' can be hooked up anywhere in the >loop. Two or more wire pairs can be wired in parallel from the central >office as easily as they can be in your home. What you are describing is >how 'answering services' have always been wired. ... I was reading a book on Bell System practices circa 1984 yesterday. It says that physically bridged answering services are now considered extremely obsolete. What they do now is that the answering service installs a peculiar kind of PBX with no regular extensions, a lot of attendant stations, and some DID trunks. When the customer wants his phone answered, he forwards his phone using regular call forwarding to one of the DID numbers. Calls show up at the answering service, the service's PBX can then report the DID number called which tells the service who the call was for. A clever way of using technology. -- John R. Levine, Segue Software, POB 349, Cambridge MA 02238, +1 617 492 3869 { bbn | spdcc | decvax | harvard | yale }!ima!johnl, Levine@YALE.something Massachusetts has 64 licensed drivers who are over 100 years old. -The Globe