Path: utzoo!telecom-request Date: 31 May 91 15:35:17 GMT From: John Slater Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: A Visitor Observes Phone Service in the UK Reply-To: John.Slater@uk.sun.com Message-ID: Organization: Sun Microsystems UK Sender: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 11, Issue 416, Message 3 of 8 Lines: 40 In article , artinb@bottomdog.uk.sun.com (Martin Baines) writes: >> He has to dial an access number to get to the Mercury network. > Depends where you live and when you got your phone as to whether it is > Mercury compatible. If you live in an exchange that is digital (50% of > exchanges, 75% of the population) then all you need to get Mercury is > a tone phone. Not true, Marty. Availability of Mercury access is dependent on whether Mercury has got around to making service available yet. This in turn depends on how close geographically a switch is to Mercury's nationwide figure-of-eight fibre optic network. This may often correspond with digital exchanges, but not necessarily. > If you get a *new* phone from BT it may/may not be tone: > it seems to depend what they have in stock (any comments?). To the best of my knowledge all of BT's phones for sale have been dual-signalling for a couple of years or so. They're slowly getting round to promoting "Star Services" (call-waiting, redirection etc) and are installing as many tone-capable phones as they can. > If you live on a pulse exchange, to get Mercury you need a phone that > can change from pulse to tone in the middle of dialing: the pulses to > get to Mercury, then tones for your PIN and the number. True. Almost all phones sold in the UK that are capable of tone signalling have a fairly automatic way of doing this (in other words buttons for abbreviated dialling can be programmed to perform mixed dialling. E.g. in Hayes-speak : ATDP131T,1234567890 to access Mercury and dial account number and PIN). John Slater Sun Microsystems UK, Gatwick Office Disclaimer : I work for Marty Baines, so I have to be nice to him.