Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!nih-csl!lhc!adm!husc6!wuarchive!mailrus!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request
From: pf@islington-terrace.csc.ti.com (Paul Fuqua)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: COCOTery
Message-ID: <12668@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 26 Sep 90 18:53:34 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 684, Message 7 of 11


     I had my first encounter with a COCOT a few weeks ago.  (I live a
telephonically sheltered life -- all the payphones at work and in my
neighborhood are SWBell phones.)

     A few miles east of Opelousas, Louisiana, I found a payphone with
no identifying marks, in the same awful housing as the GTE phones at
DFW airport (metal chiclet buttons in supposedly-fingertip-shaped
sockets).

     Following the directions on the phone, I tried to place a
calling-card call with 0+504+XXX-XXXX.  The phone turned out to be
pulse, not tone, but if I pressed any digit after the first, it
spouted weird tones in my ear.

     When I gave up and just dialed 0 for the operator, the phone
pulse-dialed a seven-digit number, at which point I gave up and drove
to the next town, where I found comprehensible South Central Bell
phones.


Paul Fuqua                     pf@csc.ti.com, ti-csl!pf
Texas Instruments Computer Science Center, Dallas, Texas