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From: smb@ulysses.att.com
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: PacBell to Eliminate Touch-Tone Charges
Message-ID: <9534@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 9 Jul 90 13:31:05 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 470, Message 6 of 10


John Hammond writes of Touch-Tone service suddenly working on his
line, and speculates about a switch upgrade.  More likely, the switch
hasn't been upgraded.

My understanding is that with crossbar switches, Touch-Tone has to be
enabled for groups of 100 lines at a time.  Thus, if a ``neighbor''
has the service, you can have it, too.  This is in contrast to modern
digital exchanges, where all lines physically can have it, but a
configuration bit tells the switch whether or not to honor the tones.
A year or two ago, NY Telephone announced that they were going to
start looking for people who used Touch-Tone without paying for it,
and send them a bill.  I haven't heard of this actually happening yet.