But on the other hand....

It seems that maybe landlines suffer from bad business practices more than loss of revenue. I have a Verizon landline and recently went online to "manage" my account. I had to request a PIN from Verizon to access my account. Hey email that on out to me right? NOOOO.... I had to get a snail mail copy of it. From FL. And another one two days later. From GA. And yet another one. From Charlotte. I hope there is not one in my mailbox today when I get home! Uh guys! you can tell time on the system to the thousands of a second but cant have your business offices integrated? Oh OK, fine I guess!

Lineline to no dial tone?

Really? The bell tolls for whom? In a recent response to an FCC Inquiry, AT&T (I still cannot adapt to the "new" lower case logo) says that traditional PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) and POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) are "relics of a by-gone era". The number of households that ditched landline service between 2006 and 2009 in favor of mobile service doubled.

I worked on SLC-96 equipment built by Western Electric used in the PSTN back in the day. I am sure that there are still WP-10 and 20 cards in service that carry the "WE IT #96" stamp on the back of the faceplate. The stamp was mine and it meant that I said the cards passed final tests after I troubleshot them during assembly.


You must admit that in today's world, a technology that is backwards compatible with equipment over 100 years old is remarkable. A 99.999 uptime is nothing to sneeze at either. The Bell System was broke apart in 1984 but seems to have rebuilt itself like a T1000 terminator, only to die from neglect in the future it seems.

Excuse me, I have to make a call on a Bell 500 telephone while I still can before I hear this.



Oh, and FIRST POST!