Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!usc!sdd.hp.com!decwrl!hayes.fai.alaska.edu!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request From: davidb@pacer.uucp (David Barts) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: FTS = Fouled-up Telephone System Message-ID: <10256@accuvax.nwu.edu> Date: 30 Jul 90 04:55:14 GMT Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu Organization: TELECOM Digest Lines: 88 Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 531, Message 1 of 8 > Mention of the photo of JFK's desk brings a piece of trivia to mind. > FTS, the Federal Telephone System, the large disjoint system that {in > theory!} provides intra-government telecommunications, came about > because at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, he could not, at a > critical juncture, get a dial tone! Actually, FTS stands for Federal Tieline System. And what is a tieline? A tieline is a piece of substandard quality string that when used to connect two soup can `telephones' has broken repeatedly and has had to be tied together in numerous places :-). Seriously, though I clearly remember the name from when I worked for a government contractor and had the misfortune of having to use FTS when I made long-distance calls in the course of my job. I'm sure many readers know what a tieline really is, so we'll find out. An FTS phone will have both a normal area code and phone number (that can be called like any other phone) and a seven-digit FTS number. The last four digits of the FTS and normal phone numbers have always been the same on every phone I've seen (505-667-8463 or FTS 843-8463). DOE Richland uses 509-373 and 509-376, which correspond to FTS 440 and 444 (I think 373 is 440, but I don't remember for sure). Dialing from one government site to another requires only seven digits after accessing the FTS dial tone. FTS can also be used to call non-FTS phones if you dial the area code and phone number, in which case I was told that FTS would route the call as far as it could, then use a conventional carrier for the remainder of the connection. My first experience with FTS was when the contractor called me up to do a phone interview before deciding to spend money on a plane ticket to fly me out for a real interview. The audio quality was atrocious -- definitely the worst-sounding long-distance call I had heard up to that time. There was lots of static on the line, the other party's voice was so faint, I could barely hear what he was saying. To make matters worse, the circuit sounded like it had a VOX on it that was set with the threshold too high, so I only heard about half of each word "Ello, s thi ster Arts?" instead of "Hello, is this Mister Barts?". Naturally, it would be impossible to conduct a meaningful interview with such a bad connection, so I told my prospective boss to call back. He said that FTS always sounded this way, so it probably wouldn't make a difference but he'd hang up and try again just the same. He was right, no improvement. The interview proceeded like this: he asks me a question, I YELL "What? Please repeat that!" into the receiver. After four or five iterations, I would have heard enough pieces of the question to piece it together, then I'd YELL the answer back to him. Strangely, the abysmal audio quality only extended one way; he could hear me fine. After I got hired, the same thing would happen to me in reverse, I'd be able to hear the called party okay (never clearly, but okay), but I'd have to YELL to make myself heard on the other end to get the called party to hear me. Using FTS always made me feel like I was in a 1930's black-and-white movie (the scene where the guy in a phone booth is yelling the same thing over and over trying to get his message across the country). I ended up pasting a message on my phone saying "Think FTS -- YELL it don't say it!" (thankfully, I didn't place LD calls from work very often -- only a few times a week). Back to the phone interview. I'd have been a bit more understanding of the poor quality of the FTS connection had it been between two places that don't use much FTS, and so have limited FTS service, but the contractor was at Richland, WA (a major DOE site), and at the time I was living with my parents in Los Alamos, NM (another major DOE site). I also got bad connections after being hired when calling from Richland to the Washington, DC area. If JFK had FTS in his office, he'd probably decide to keep on pushing buttons trying to place his call through a commercial LD carrier. Sure, it may take an extra ten minutes to get a connection, but he'd waste that much time repeating himself on FTS and risk being misunderstood. "You said `fire', Mister President? Okay..." "NO!! HOLD YOUR FIRE!!" "Right, `FIRE!'" "NO!! DON'T FIRE!!" "Firing now!" > I seem to recall that FTS started out with four underutilized CO's > serving as tandems. DC's is in the middle of Maryland somewhere. And now it utilizes CO equipment retired from Liberia, Bangladesh, and Cambodia after the equipment reached such an age as to no longer provide the quality of service customers in those nations are accustomed to. :-) David Barts Pacer Corporation, Bothell, WA davidb@pacer.uucp ...!uunet!pilchuck!pacer!davidb