I remember my first time at Epcot--I was very impressed to see a Nortel coin phone in the Canada pavilion.
Number PULEAZE! Part One:
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Kings Island amusement park used to have Nortel coin phones. That area was served by United Telephone, and they used Northern equipment.
I have a few of the Contempra phones.. those handsets are heavy.
No question that parts of metro Orlando are former United Telephone areas; just happened to notice that years ago and was impressed.
Bell Telephone System 1932
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Bell Telephone System 1938
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Western Electric 1957
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Bell Telephone System 1961
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polkanut
Well-known member
Family friends had a beige GTE "Space Maker" installed in the breakfast nook of their home when they built it in the early 1960's. I was always fascinated by the look of it.
Old "Space Saver"
I had this WECo 201A set above the bench in my workshop at our previous place. I won it for $10.99 on ebay without a handset. It's boxed up now since I don't have a shop set up at our new place yet. I originally wanted one with a dial, but decided I'd never initiate a call from the work bench, and the adjacent room had a 500 model on the desk in there.
This phone was hooked up to a 634A subset. The handset should be the older E1 type, but the later F1 style also works on it. I had a spare F1 laying around, and I prefer the coiled cord that stays out of the way.
I had this WECo 201A set above the bench in my workshop at our previous place. I won it for $10.99 on ebay without a handset. It's boxed up now since I don't have a shop set up at our new place yet. I originally wanted one with a dial, but decided I'd never initiate a call from the work bench, and the adjacent room had a 500 model on the desk in there.
This phone was hooked up to a 634A subset. The handset should be the older E1 type, but the later F1 style also works on it. I had a spare F1 laying around, and I prefer the coiled cord that stays out of the way.
General Telephone & Electronics 1962
Bell Telephone System 1963
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Ask me how much I hate Verizon.
<h1 class="post-title">Verizon hangs up on landline customers in Brooklyn</h1>
<h6>September 11, 2018 By Mary Frost Brooklyn Daily Eagle</h6>
<h2 class="subheading">Trump’s FCC reduces consumer protections</h2>
If you’re a Verizon customer who uses a traditional landline in your home or business, you may soon be facing an unpleasant surprise.
Over the summer in Brooklyn Heights, numerous customers, with no warning, discovered their phones no longer had a dial tone.
Kevin Carberry, an independent real estate broker specializing in Brooklyn Heights brownstones, co-ops and condos, told the Brooklyn Eagle that the phones at the six work stations in his home office on Columbia Heights were recently shut off with no warning.
“I noticed I was getting no calls on my business line and when I checked, the line was dead,” he said. When he got in touch with Verizon, “I was informed that my service was out and my voicemail was not activated.” Verizon told him that there had been a major interruption to a trunk line and repairs would take 3 to 6 months.
Carberry said Verizon provided him with a “wireless gizmo” [Voice Link, which connects to a cell phone tower] that would answer one phone. “I have six stations,” he said, and trying to answer all the calls on one phone is not feasible for him. “I had all the calls forwarded to my cellphone. What a mistake.”
What bothers Carberry the most is Verizon’s “cavalier attitude,” he said. “To be without a business phone for 3 to 6 months with no answering service is outrageous. I complained that their solution is not a solution to my problem. Their fix was to charge me to forward calls to me.” Their solution is not “consumer friendly,” he said.
The Eagle has received complaints from other Brooklyn Heights residents concerning their Verizon landline service outages as well.
Jeffrey Smith, an area activist who checks up on a number of elderly residents, wrote via email on June 29, “Over the last two weeks I have received mounting reports of home phones suddenly becoming inoperative (no dial tone) with little or no warning over a wide area of Brooklyn Heights. When people call Verizon (through an outside or cell phone), they are told that the outage is due to ‘cable problems’ or ‘the installation of new cables.’ Beyond this, they are offered little or no further information.” The residents were told repairs would take roughly two weeks, Smith said.
Smith called the outage a serious concern because wired landlines are used for home security systems, fire and intrusion alarms and personal emergency notification devices for the disabled and elderly.
“Pendants are used by the hundreds among the elderly and impaired in the general downtown area. This provides the option of living independently. But given a service interruption, especially a prolonged outage, such a situation could spiral into a tragedy,” he said.
When the Eagle reached out to the Brooklyn Heights Association to learn if the organization had received any complaints, Executive Director Peter Bray said their own phone service had been affected.
“The BHA’s DSL line stopped functioning in mid-May and despite endless promises by Verizon to repair it, it is still not in service. Instead, Verizon provided the office with a device that establishes our internet connection through cell phone towers, though it is not 100 percent reliable and there are days when the connection is intermittent,” Bray said.
He added, “The last time I spoke to Verizon, I was told by a representative that Verizon has no intention of repairing our line, which is part of the old copper network. The line will only be restored when the building we are in switches to FIOS, the fiber optic network, which is something we do not control. In the meantime, we have to make do with a band aid approach to our problem.”
Happening Across the Nation
The problem is not limited to Brooklyn Heights or New York City, according to the non-profit Washington, D.C.-based public interest group Public Knowledge.
Across the country, copper lines are being replaced with fiber or wireless networks that use Internet Protocol technology, which can provide faster and better phone service. But new rules adopted by the FCC under the Trump administration do not contain sufficient consumer protections or sufficient outreach to the 49 million customers who are still using landlines, Public Knowledge says.
The technology transition will be a good thing in the long term, Daiquiri Ryan, Policy Fellow at Public Knowledge, told the Eagle. In the meantime, however, Verizon and AT&T “are not taking care of their copper” network. She said the FCC under President Trump “rolled back all the consumer protections the previous administration put in place.”
The Voice Link units customers are given as a replacement “are so unreliable they don’t even consistently call 911,” she said. Landlines, by comparison, continue to work even when the power goes out, and they are compatible with credit card machines, faxes, alarms and medical devices.
“For the disabled and elderly, it’s a huge deal,” she said. The FCC eliminating advance notice requirement could make a big difference “if grandma falls.”
The problem is there’s no competition, Ryan added. “Seventy percent of Americans only have the choice of one or zero landline providers.”
Depending on the carrier, customers with a complaint have only a certain number of days to contact the FCC to oppose their repair or landline replacement, and the average consumer won’t be able to navigate the process, she said. She recommended people affected complain directly to Verizon. “Let them know that you know this is about copper retirement, and know Verizon is trying to push [you] into a higher contract.”
Because of the cost to replace copper with fiber (about $30,000 a mile) consumers will be paying higher costs for the upgraded service, she said. “Verizon is the only provider; they can charge what they want.”
Public Knowledge says the problem can be even worse in rural areas, where service providers like Verizon can virtually abandon their customers, and in places like Fire Island, where Verizon was blocked from abruptly terminating service to the entire island in 2013.
“They just let the [copper wires] rot when they stop working,” she said. Public Knowledge is fighting in the 9th Circuit to “get some of these rules back on the books,” she said.
“Verizon’s tactics are definitely Trumpian,” said one longtime Heights-based business owner, who fears retribution from Verizon.
“I need a fax, I need a hard line,” he added. “It is typically short-sighted and again, Trumpian, to allow the abuse of something like underground cables under public streets … it’s a public trust, for God’s sake.”
A Verizon spokesperson told the Eagle on Tuesday that Verizon would be looking into the cases we reported, and would have no comment until they knew “what’s going on with individual customers.”
Another incentive for Verizon to rip out landlines is the fact that most employees of Verizon’s landline business are unionized, while most wireless operations are not. As landlines disappear, unions slowly lose ground. In Brooklyn, however, wireless workers voted to join Local 1109 in 2014 and won a contract in 2016 after joining landline workers on the 49-day strike against Verizon. According to CWA, the workers fought off “an extremely aggressive anti-union campaign.”
FCC Rule Changes
According to Telecompetitor.com, the FCC adopted rules in November 2017 eliminating certain consumer notice requirements, enabling service providers to discontinue certain low-speed data services that had been grandfathered and eliminating the need for service providers to receive FCC approval before upgrading legacy services.
The FCC is expected to give permission to the phone companies to stop maintaining the old copper networks somewhere around 2020, according to ARsTechnica, “potentially bringing an end to the century-old regulations that guaranteed universal service and other consumer protections.”
In a press release, the commission said the new rules “allow carriers to invest in modern networks rather than devote scarce resources to outmoded legacy services.” FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said that carriers such as Verizon could save $40 to $50 per year per home if they were not required to maintain copper infrastructure.
The FCC changes flew under the radar because the public was more focused on the net neutrality fight going on at that time, Ryan said. “Net neutrality is our number one issue — 85 percent of people want net neutrality back on the books. So many FCC protections have been rolled back. It’s been a stressful year and a half.”
https://brooklyneagle.com/articles/2018/09/11/verizon-hangs-up-on-landline-customers-in-brooklyn/
<h1 class="post-title">Verizon hangs up on landline customers in Brooklyn</h1>
<h6>September 11, 2018 By Mary Frost Brooklyn Daily Eagle</h6>
<h2 class="subheading">Trump’s FCC reduces consumer protections</h2>
If you’re a Verizon customer who uses a traditional landline in your home or business, you may soon be facing an unpleasant surprise.
Over the summer in Brooklyn Heights, numerous customers, with no warning, discovered their phones no longer had a dial tone.
Kevin Carberry, an independent real estate broker specializing in Brooklyn Heights brownstones, co-ops and condos, told the Brooklyn Eagle that the phones at the six work stations in his home office on Columbia Heights were recently shut off with no warning.
“I noticed I was getting no calls on my business line and when I checked, the line was dead,” he said. When he got in touch with Verizon, “I was informed that my service was out and my voicemail was not activated.” Verizon told him that there had been a major interruption to a trunk line and repairs would take 3 to 6 months.
Carberry said Verizon provided him with a “wireless gizmo” [Voice Link, which connects to a cell phone tower] that would answer one phone. “I have six stations,” he said, and trying to answer all the calls on one phone is not feasible for him. “I had all the calls forwarded to my cellphone. What a mistake.”
What bothers Carberry the most is Verizon’s “cavalier attitude,” he said. “To be without a business phone for 3 to 6 months with no answering service is outrageous. I complained that their solution is not a solution to my problem. Their fix was to charge me to forward calls to me.” Their solution is not “consumer friendly,” he said.
The Eagle has received complaints from other Brooklyn Heights residents concerning their Verizon landline service outages as well.
Jeffrey Smith, an area activist who checks up on a number of elderly residents, wrote via email on June 29, “Over the last two weeks I have received mounting reports of home phones suddenly becoming inoperative (no dial tone) with little or no warning over a wide area of Brooklyn Heights. When people call Verizon (through an outside or cell phone), they are told that the outage is due to ‘cable problems’ or ‘the installation of new cables.’ Beyond this, they are offered little or no further information.” The residents were told repairs would take roughly two weeks, Smith said.
Smith called the outage a serious concern because wired landlines are used for home security systems, fire and intrusion alarms and personal emergency notification devices for the disabled and elderly.
“Pendants are used by the hundreds among the elderly and impaired in the general downtown area. This provides the option of living independently. But given a service interruption, especially a prolonged outage, such a situation could spiral into a tragedy,” he said.
When the Eagle reached out to the Brooklyn Heights Association to learn if the organization had received any complaints, Executive Director Peter Bray said their own phone service had been affected.
“The BHA’s DSL line stopped functioning in mid-May and despite endless promises by Verizon to repair it, it is still not in service. Instead, Verizon provided the office with a device that establishes our internet connection through cell phone towers, though it is not 100 percent reliable and there are days when the connection is intermittent,” Bray said.
He added, “The last time I spoke to Verizon, I was told by a representative that Verizon has no intention of repairing our line, which is part of the old copper network. The line will only be restored when the building we are in switches to FIOS, the fiber optic network, which is something we do not control. In the meantime, we have to make do with a band aid approach to our problem.”
Happening Across the Nation
The problem is not limited to Brooklyn Heights or New York City, according to the non-profit Washington, D.C.-based public interest group Public Knowledge.
Across the country, copper lines are being replaced with fiber or wireless networks that use Internet Protocol technology, which can provide faster and better phone service. But new rules adopted by the FCC under the Trump administration do not contain sufficient consumer protections or sufficient outreach to the 49 million customers who are still using landlines, Public Knowledge says.
The technology transition will be a good thing in the long term, Daiquiri Ryan, Policy Fellow at Public Knowledge, told the Eagle. In the meantime, however, Verizon and AT&T “are not taking care of their copper” network. She said the FCC under President Trump “rolled back all the consumer protections the previous administration put in place.”
The Voice Link units customers are given as a replacement “are so unreliable they don’t even consistently call 911,” she said. Landlines, by comparison, continue to work even when the power goes out, and they are compatible with credit card machines, faxes, alarms and medical devices.
“For the disabled and elderly, it’s a huge deal,” she said. The FCC eliminating advance notice requirement could make a big difference “if grandma falls.”
The problem is there’s no competition, Ryan added. “Seventy percent of Americans only have the choice of one or zero landline providers.”
Depending on the carrier, customers with a complaint have only a certain number of days to contact the FCC to oppose their repair or landline replacement, and the average consumer won’t be able to navigate the process, she said. She recommended people affected complain directly to Verizon. “Let them know that you know this is about copper retirement, and know Verizon is trying to push [you] into a higher contract.”
Because of the cost to replace copper with fiber (about $30,000 a mile) consumers will be paying higher costs for the upgraded service, she said. “Verizon is the only provider; they can charge what they want.”
Public Knowledge says the problem can be even worse in rural areas, where service providers like Verizon can virtually abandon their customers, and in places like Fire Island, where Verizon was blocked from abruptly terminating service to the entire island in 2013.
“They just let the [copper wires] rot when they stop working,” she said. Public Knowledge is fighting in the 9th Circuit to “get some of these rules back on the books,” she said.
“Verizon’s tactics are definitely Trumpian,” said one longtime Heights-based business owner, who fears retribution from Verizon.
“I need a fax, I need a hard line,” he added. “It is typically short-sighted and again, Trumpian, to allow the abuse of something like underground cables under public streets … it’s a public trust, for God’s sake.”
A Verizon spokesperson told the Eagle on Tuesday that Verizon would be looking into the cases we reported, and would have no comment until they knew “what’s going on with individual customers.”
Another incentive for Verizon to rip out landlines is the fact that most employees of Verizon’s landline business are unionized, while most wireless operations are not. As landlines disappear, unions slowly lose ground. In Brooklyn, however, wireless workers voted to join Local 1109 in 2014 and won a contract in 2016 after joining landline workers on the 49-day strike against Verizon. According to CWA, the workers fought off “an extremely aggressive anti-union campaign.”
FCC Rule Changes
According to Telecompetitor.com, the FCC adopted rules in November 2017 eliminating certain consumer notice requirements, enabling service providers to discontinue certain low-speed data services that had been grandfathered and eliminating the need for service providers to receive FCC approval before upgrading legacy services.
The FCC is expected to give permission to the phone companies to stop maintaining the old copper networks somewhere around 2020, according to ARsTechnica, “potentially bringing an end to the century-old regulations that guaranteed universal service and other consumer protections.”
In a press release, the commission said the new rules “allow carriers to invest in modern networks rather than devote scarce resources to outmoded legacy services.” FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said that carriers such as Verizon could save $40 to $50 per year per home if they were not required to maintain copper infrastructure.
The FCC changes flew under the radar because the public was more focused on the net neutrality fight going on at that time, Ryan said. “Net neutrality is our number one issue — 85 percent of people want net neutrality back on the books. So many FCC protections have been rolled back. It’s been a stressful year and a half.”
https://brooklyneagle.com/articles/2018/09/11/verizon-hangs-up-on-landline-customers-in-brooklyn/
Here's the Explanation:
This might be news to some, but there has been a smug Verizon puppet in charge of the FCC for the past couple of years, thanks to YKW. Scroll down to the last couple of paragraphs in the linked article if you don't want to read the whole thing.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy...t-jokes-that-the-fcc-doesnt-want-you-to-read/
This might be news to some, but there has been a smug Verizon puppet in charge of the FCC for the past couple of years, thanks to YKW. Scroll down to the last couple of paragraphs in the linked article if you don't want to read the whole thing.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy...t-jokes-that-the-fcc-doesnt-want-you-to-read/
Bell Telephone Sytem 1956
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<script async src="//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js" charset="utf-8"></script>vacerator
Well-known member
Smug Verizon kingpin
has support of guess who also. Another Mew Yorker.
has support of guess who also. Another Mew Yorker.
I recently called Verizon and the rep tried mightily to make me switch from copper to fiber. Basically telling me it was going to happen soon anyway. I said we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. What infuriates me is that we'll loose service in a black-out. And they'll only provide a battery for one hour back-up not talk time. Last black-out we had lasted 23 hours. Talk about taking a huge step backward.
The telecom lobby is so huge in D.C. that there's not a chance in hell that we can save the copper network. Particularly as long as the fox Pai is guarding the FCC hen house.
Louie,
AT&T did the same thing to me over 3 years ago, insisting that it was going to happen anyway. So, said OK, I’d convert to their wireless. They said there would be no cost to me for the installation. Then 2 days later, in the mail comes a bill for over $300.00 for this “free”installation for something I didn’t really want anyway! So I immediately called them and told them to cancel the wireless installation.
Then I went to the Comcast office and picked up the equipment for a self install of their voice and wi-fi internet. I ported my number that we’ve had since 1987, and the modem for the voice has a backup battery, the has worked just fine whenever we’ve had a power outage. I just keep a couple of corded phones plugged in upstairs. I disconnected the AT&T land line connections from the service box on the outside of the house, and backfed the voice signal into the phone jack nearest the modem and all the phone jacks have a voice signal in the house. The service is way better that the AT&T service ever was, and I only wish that I had cut the connection with them years earlier. And the wi-fi is hella fast, so much better that AT&T’s crap DSL.
I had AT&T service for 43 years,and was always a loyal customer. But for the last 10 years they treated me like crap. I finally had it with them. And they owed me $40.00 from the payment I had made for the service before I discontinued their service. I had to call the office of the vice president to ultimately get my money refunded, total BS!!
So, my advice, it to look into your cable TV provider for service and cut the cord on Verizon, you won’t be sorry that you did.
Eddie
AT&T did the same thing to me over 3 years ago, insisting that it was going to happen anyway. So, said OK, I’d convert to their wireless. They said there would be no cost to me for the installation. Then 2 days later, in the mail comes a bill for over $300.00 for this “free”installation for something I didn’t really want anyway! So I immediately called them and told them to cancel the wireless installation.
Then I went to the Comcast office and picked up the equipment for a self install of their voice and wi-fi internet. I ported my number that we’ve had since 1987, and the modem for the voice has a backup battery, the has worked just fine whenever we’ve had a power outage. I just keep a couple of corded phones plugged in upstairs. I disconnected the AT&T land line connections from the service box on the outside of the house, and backfed the voice signal into the phone jack nearest the modem and all the phone jacks have a voice signal in the house. The service is way better that the AT&T service ever was, and I only wish that I had cut the connection with them years earlier. And the wi-fi is hella fast, so much better that AT&T’s crap DSL.
I had AT&T service for 43 years,and was always a loyal customer. But for the last 10 years they treated me like crap. I finally had it with them. And they owed me $40.00 from the payment I had made for the service before I discontinued their service. I had to call the office of the vice president to ultimately get my money refunded, total BS!!
So, my advice, it to look into your cable TV provider for service and cut the cord on Verizon, you won’t be sorry that you did.
Eddie
Eddie
I'd have no issue switching over from copper, except for the loss of service in a black-out. When tropical storm Sandy roared in I lost cell phone service, (although strangely, internet service via the cell provider remained unaffected) but I never lost the landline. It worked flawlessly. It's sad that there is no incentive to remedy this. And with things as they are in Washington, I doubt there ever will be. We really are at their mercy.
I'd have no issue switching over from copper, except for the loss of service in a black-out. When tropical storm Sandy roared in I lost cell phone service, (although strangely, internet service via the cell provider remained unaffected) but I never lost the landline. It worked flawlessly. It's sad that there is no incentive to remedy this. And with things as they are in Washington, I doubt there ever will be. We really are at their mercy.
