Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ginosko!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!wuarchive!texbell!vector!telecom-gateway From: zorch.SF-Bay.ORG!scott@cs.utexas.edu (Scott Hazen Mueller) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Some Comments On The GTE "Problem" in California Message-ID: Date: 21 Sep 89 17:30:50 GMT Sender: news@vector.Dallas.TX.US Reply-To: scott@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Scott Hazen Mueller) Organization: SF Bay Public-Access Unix Lines: 42 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 394, message 5 of 5 John Higdon wrote: |Fortunately, I have never seen any of that. But GTE in California used |theirs as a matter of routine. A favorite trick of the pea-brains in |Los Gatos was to install subscriber carrier and then at some future |time turn off the service of the metallic subscriber (battery and all). |After some indeterminate amount of time, the nicad in the SC unit would |become weak and the carrier subscriber's service would just fade away. |This actually happened to me. You should have heard me trying to |explain this to some 611 droid. You should have seen how long it took |them to fix it. After several days I rigged up an outboard supply and |got my service back. That fix would be there to this day if they hadn't |finally added more cable to the area and converted my line to metallic. |And this was business service! I'm not picking on John, really I'm not; his was just a good example. I read the the words, but I'm seriously lacking some referents. For instance, "subscriber carrier"? The description implies a generator on John's premises, which was powered from the phone system, and which he added a power supply to when GTE switched it off. What is it, and why is it bad, and why is their carrier on a phone line anyway? I though that it was DC with pure AM transmission? Also, his line was "converted to metallic"? What was it before it was metallic - a piece of string with two tin cans? I find Telecom Digest very informative, and I like the stories about old phone equipment and telco history, when I can understand them. I would love to see on occasional tutorial article to clarify some of these things. Scott Hazen Mueller| scott@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (ames|pyramid|vsi1)!zorch!scott 685 Balfour Drive | (408) 298-6213 |Mail to fusion-request@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG San Jose, CA 95111 |No room for quote.|for sci.physics.fusion digests via email [Moderator's Note: Actually, Scott has an interesting idea. Would any of you be interested in writing part of a tutorial, something we might call "TELECOM Digest Guide to How Telephones Work" or similar? Maybe it could be a five or six part tutorial, with a section devoted to crossbar; a section devoted to ESS; a section on the workings of the instrument itself; a section on cellular; one for historic information, etc. They would be kept in the archives and accessible on request. Another part might be "Most Common Questions and Answers from the Digest", which would be sent out to all new subscribers automatically. Write me personally with your ideas on this. 'ptownson@eecs.nwu.edu'. PT]