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From: cbmvax!snark.thyrsus.com!cowan@uunet.uu.net (John Cowan)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: New Breed of COCOT
Message-ID: <15986@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 10 Jan 91 16:41:40 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 11, Issue 26, Message 4 of 8


In <15896@accuvax.nwu.edu> our esteemed Moderator wrote:

>There are some COCOTS here which require a careful
>examination to determine that they are not 'genuine Bell'.

Here in New York City, there exist COCOTs that are >identical< to New
York Telephone payphones, except that they don't say "New York
Telephone" on the rate card or elsewhere on the phone.  I suspect they
are reconditioned models that NYT sold as scrap.

What's worse, not every NYT payphone (especially those inside in odd
locations, some of which actually still have rotary dials!)  is marked
"New York Telephone", although most are.  So there is truly no way to
be safe except to search every payphone and refuse to use any that
aren't marked NYT.  That excludes some usable ones, but is the only
method guaranteed to reject all zero-armed bandits.