Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!att!pacbell!ames!lll-winken!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!wuarchive!swbatl!texbell!vector!telecom-gateway From: gmw1@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (Gabe M Wiener) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Toll Stations Message-ID: Date: 7 Aug 89 18:08:11 GMT Sender: news@vector.Dallas.TX.US Lines: 22 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 278, message 11 of 12 Could someone explain just what a toll station is? I've always thought that it's just a subscriber circuit that has to be signalled manually. Is it anything more than that? More importantly, why do toll-stations still exist? Isn't it possible to connect the subscriber to a regular automatic circuit. When I was a senior in High School two years ago, I remember getting literature from Deep Springs College. The literature said, "To contact us, call your long distance carrier and ask for Deep Springs Toll Station #2" -G [Moderator's Note: A toll-station is a telephone in a very remote area so thinly populated that not even a small (but normally operating) exchange can be profitably maintained. The one or two -- sometimes even three or four!! -- phones in the middle of nowhere -- literally! -- are from some other exchange, usually many miles away. Toll-stations are mostly a Nevada phenomenon, but a few exist in western Utah; in Arizona; in the desert area of California; and the northwestern rural area of Idaho...places where the entire population of town is six people. PT]