Telephone News

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

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

AT&T Tandem and Jenny List updates

Both the AT&T Tandem and the Jenny lists have been updated. Check them out!

Seattle Times article on the Connections Museum

As some of you probably know, I think the Connections Museum in Seattle, WA is the best place on Earth. Well, not 100% true, but it's definitely in my personal Top 10. The Seattle Times published an article in January 2024 on this wonderful place. Check it out here: https://www.seattletimes.com/pacific-nw-magazine/from-old-phones-to-volunteers-everything-clicks-at-the-connections-museum/

New Recordings!

Sorry that I've been absent from this site. I've been busy with other projects. But I'm back for a short while.

I've updated the AT&T General Error page with some new recordings from the "New 4ESS" (N4E) suite that AT&T has been fast bring online. Here are some recordings from these new N4E machines.

http://telephoneworld.org/telephone-sounds/modern-north-american-telephone-sounds/att-general-error-recordings/

A volunteer collective is setting up free pay phones in Philadelphia

An “amateur phone collective” in Philadelphia is working to bring back pay phones to the city – just without the actual payment. PhilTel, a volunteer organization that launched in June, is planning to open its first free-to-use payphone on December 17 at Iffy Books, a hacker-focused bookshop and workshop in the Center City district.

For more information, check out the CNN article here: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/04/us/philadelphia-pay-phones-philtel-trnd/index.html

Jenny I’ve got your number – 867-5309!

Most everyone knows of the song "867-5309/Jenny" from the early 80s. But did you ever wonder what would  happen if you were to dial 867-5309 in all the US and Canadian Area Codes? Check out the list that I've compiled and take a look at the various things you get when you call all of them!

A Phone Trip to Head Waters, Virginia (Northern Telecom Centurion)

In December 2021, I drove out to a very small rural town in western Virginia to check out a pay phone that is still in service and is central office controlled (not a COCOT). A very rare find in the United States in this day and age!

Pink Floyd’s Young Lust – Explained and Demystified

If you're a fan of Pink Floyd's Young Lust but are scratching you head as to all the beeps and boops you hear during the telephone call portion of the song - this article explains it all.

I've been meaning to write this article for a long time now, but waited until the site makeover was complete. Now I've finally gotten around to it. (grin)

The Beginning of the End of AT&T Operators Started in 1992

It's hard to imagine almost 30 years ago that the first Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems were coming online to eventually replace operators. In fact, AT&T no longer has an operators. At all! They got rid of them several years ago. This video came out in October 2021, but it was recorded back in 1992. So take a look to see the beginning of the end.

The UK Speaking Clock

A great video on the UK Speaking Clock and its history.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVeMNrwRO-A

The Old Days -Talkable Busy Signals

Evan Doorbell is mentioned in an article about talkable busy signals back in the old days where impromptu conferences were found.

https://onezero.medium.com/the-prototype-for-clubhouse-is-40-years-old-and-it-was-built-by-phone-hackers-71389d117cad

AT&T and Frontier have let phone networks fall apart

Imagine that. Verizon as well.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/02/att-raised-phone-prices-153-as-service-got-steadily-worse-report-finds/

Fun with a Number 5 Crossbar and trouble cards!

The Connections Museum in Seattle finally got their trouble card machine on their #5XB to work again. Fun with trouble cards!

https://twitter.com/i/status/1349535360477347841

AT&T Central Office in Downtown Nashville is bombed on Christmas Day

Domestic terrorism hits the main downtown AT&T central office in Nashville, TN - knocking out communications for a good portion of town.

Link to news article

CenturyLink is now Lumen Technologies

More name changes and more confusion on the telecom front.

CenturyLink (formerly CenturyTel, Embarq, Sprint, United Telephone, Qwest, US West, and a number of Baby Bells) is now called Lumen technologies, effective Sept. 18, 2020.

https://www.multivu.com/players/English/8524356-centurylink-rebrands-as-lumen/

They will continue to market their residential and small business services as CenturyLink, but enterprise business is now called Lumen.

Vintage Princess Phones

Nice website that talks about Princess phone history:

https://clickamericana.com/topics/home-garden/vintage-princess-phones-the-popular-compact-color-telephones-with-a-lit-rotary-dial

The Death of Sprint

The Death of Sprint - once a force to be beckoned with, is now history. A good synopsis can be found here: https://blog.telegeography.com/sprint-reaches-the-finish-line-the-rise-and-fall-of-an-american-telco

Eventually I'll get around to writing a page about this history and demise of Sprint. That may take a while. But it is on my To-Do list.

How does MF signaling work?

The Connections Museum in Seattle released a new video today called "How does MF Signalling work".

Ann Syrdal, Who Helped Give Computers a Female Voice, Dies at 74

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/20/technology/ann-syrdal-who-helped-give-computers-a-female-voice-dies-at-74.html

As a researcher at AT&T, she helped lay the groundwork for modern digital assistants like Siri and Alexa.

Dr. Sydral's research at Bell Labs in speech synthesis was incorporated into AT&T's Natural Voices, which in 1998 was cutting edge technology. It was later the foundation for the modern Siri and other computer voice systems.

A very over simplification on how the old phone system used to work.

A *VERY* over simplification of how the old phone system used 2600 Hz as the key frequency for handing answer supervision and SF (single frequency) dialing. Of course discovered by accident using a "Captain Crunch" whistle that just happened to be at 2600 Hz.

Telephone News coming soon!

This is where you'll see current events for anything telephone related that I see in the news!