Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!psuvax1!rutgers!netsys!vector!telecom-gateway From: samho@larry.cs.washington.edu (Sam Ho) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: SxS payphones Message-ID: Date: 5 Oct 89 18:44:07 GMT Sender: news@vector.Dallas.TX.US Lines: 27 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 432, message 5 of 7 I was at a conference near Monticello, Illinois (20 miles west of Champaign and about 150 miles south of [Telecom Headquarters]). The pay phone there (Allerton House) was of the post-pay variety. I assume it was on a SxS switch, since when I tone-dialed 0-NPA-NNX-XXXX I got an extended length of silence, with faint clicking as it pulsed out the digits, followed by clunk! Bong! A T and T. (As a side note, it apparently still uses the cry-baby style of not-a-number signal, too.) The oddity is that there was a typed sticker noting that to use other long distance carriers, dial the 6-digit access code or 0+10 digits, and advise the operator of the handling. I've never heard of 6-digit access codes, and trying to dial 102220 got me a reorder before I finished. Dialing 950-1022 gets a reorder, too. Besides, I've never heard of Equal Access on a SxS switch. My best guess (I didn't try it out) is that since I think post-pay phones work by cutting the outbound audio until either the totalizer signals payment or a zero is dialed, maybe the zero bounces the call out to a tandem, so that 0-10xxx reaches other carriers. Or maybe it's just dial 0-NPA-NNX-XXX, wait for the operator, and say "Use MCI, please." Any thoughts? Incidentally, I think this is not an IBT area, since the phone was an AE device. Champaign itself is IBT, though. Sam Ho samho@larry.cs.washington.edu