What’s New

Phil McCarter’s collection to be preserved at new museum in Denver

March 14, 2025 – The entire collection of long time telephone collector Phil McCarter of Salem, OR (also known as SXSPhil) will be moving to the Connections Museum. Most fans of telephony know of the awesome museum in Seattle, WA with their collection of switching equipment (Panel, #1XB, #5XB, DMS-10, 3ESS, etc.) and how much they are preserving telephone history for the next generation. Phil has worked a deal with the Connections Museum in Denver to house his collection of switching equipment (including one of the two fully functioning #3XB switches in the country) in a new building in Denver.
Phil posted the following to several groups on Facebook this week about the news:
“For the few that has heard the news, The connections museum will be opening up a Denver CO location. All of my switching and phones will be relocated there. For those that want to know why I’m letting go of my collection is as following. @ 2+ years ago, I almost died, I have not recovered 100 % close but not all the way, for 40+ years I’ve had serious knee troubles thanks to High school staff, I was injured during P E and it was not properly dealt with. It’s becoming difficult for me to take care of a large property with lots of buildings and yard to maintain, and my Wife wants to move. at 60+ it’s time to let go.
Now it will be saved and not sold off 1 item at time or scraped. Yes, I’m sad to let it go but I also happy to see it move to a public location and live on longer. Thanks to all who has seen it and enjoyed it. As of May 1st, we start to take it apart, so if anyone wants to see it you have until then. I live 5 miles east of I-5 south of Salem Oregon, the connections group are looking for volunteers to help, Contact the if you want to help. Phil”
Sarah at the Connections Museum in Seattle announced it in a video a few days ago:

A Visit to the Ellsworth Telephone Museum – October 2024

In October 2024, I had the opportunity to visit The Telephone Museum in Ellsworth, Maine. This museum had so much to see! It features many different kinds of telephones, manual cordboards, several Step by Step switches, several All-Relay switches – and finally an entire #3 crossbar switch and a partial #5 crossbar switch. This is a place that a telephone enthusiast must visit at least once in their life. There is a long write-up on my visit, plenty of photos, and also plenty of videos! Please visit the Ellsworth, ME Telephone Museum section

Telephone News

Phil McCarter’s collection to be preserved at new museum in Denver

March 14, 2025 – The entire collection of long time telephone collector Phil McCarter of Salem, OR (also known as SXSPhil) will be moving to the Connections Museum. Most fans of telephony know of the awesome museum in Seattle, WA with their collection of switching equipment (Panel, #1XB, #5XB, DMS-10, 3ESS, etc.) and how much they are preserving telephone history for the next generation. Phil has worked a deal with the Connections Museum in Denver to house his collection of switching equipment (including one of the two fully functioning #3XB switches in the country) in a new building in Denver.
Phil posted the following to several groups on Facebook this week about the news:
“For the few that has heard the news, The connections museum will be opening up a Denver CO location. All of my switching and phones will be relocated there. For those that want to know why I’m letting go of my collection is as following. @ 2+ years ago, I almost died, I have not recovered 100 % close but not all the way, for 40+ years I’ve had serious knee troubles thanks to High school staff, I was injured during P E and it was not properly dealt with. It’s becoming difficult for me to take care of a large property with lots of buildings and yard to maintain, and my Wife wants to move. at 60+ it’s time to let go.
Now it will be saved and not sold off 1 item at time or scraped. Yes, I’m sad to let it go but I also happy to see it move to a public location and live on longer. Thanks to all who has seen it and enjoyed it. As of May 1st, we start to take it apart, so if anyone wants to see it you have until then. I live 5 miles east of I-5 south of Salem Oregon, the connections group are looking for volunteers to help, Contact the if you want to help. Phil”
Sarah at the Connections Museum in Seattle announced it in a video a few days ago:

And now Bell Canada is buying Ziply Fiber

Whose buying whom?

Bell Canada is buying Ziply Fiber, which only formed a few years ago and bought former GTE/Verizon/Frontier territory in Washington state, Idaho, Oregon, and Montana. Looks like it will take several years to complete and will cost around C$5 Billion.

Now of course I’m curious as to why they think they’ll succeed here in the US. I think Ziply was barely keeping afloat with all the debt that they have. Investing so much in new infrastructure is expensive. Retiring those old TDM switches for softswitches, and of course all that new fiber (or is that now fibre?) that they’ve been putting in to upgrade folks to some really fast high speed Internet. Google found out that it’s really expensive to put that in, and I think Ziply was in over their head. Hope that Bell Canada can succeed and make a profit.

 

Verizon to merge with Frontier

This goes under the “what are they thinking?” department. Verizon is mostly a wireless company, with a FTTH as a sideline and a copper infrastructure they’d rather get rid of. But they are buying Frontier for the FIOS network they divested themselves from about 10 years ago. FIOS is the only thing keeping the “wireline” side of Verizon afloat, as nobody is keeping the copper side going. And what little bit of copper they have they’re S-L-O-W-L-Y moving away from TDM to packet switching. But that’s moving at a snail’s pace. So I’m just very surprised they actually care about FTTH and literally buying it back from Frontier. But I assume the aging copper plant is going along with it?

And keep in mind, even Frontier has a reduced footprint than before. They sold the aging copper plant and the little bit of fiber plant to Ziply Fiber in four states (Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana) so that’s even less FIOS FTTH than before. Ziply, on the other hand, has ripped out pretty much every TDM switch they had and replaced it with packet (probably Metaswitch) and going full bore with their FTTH installations.

More info here: https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/verizon-is-reportedly-near-a-deal-to-buy-broadband-provider-frontier-communications-210317747.html