atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums Other TDM Phone Systems 1A2 and Comkey Telephones & Systems 551b basic setup

There are several time-out options, depending upon the serving central office.

The wink/steady lamp on hold option stems from the old days when the phone company would charge extra, every month, for the winking hold lamp. Corrupt installers could be persuaded (I'm told...wink, wink!) to add wink where it wasn't being paid for.

I was on a trouble call once, and the subscriber asked me how much I would charge to add WINK to his lines. I said I couldn't break the rules, because my job would be in jeopardy. I opened one of his 6040 keys to replace a blown 51A lamp, and a piece of paper fell out. It read "Under no circumstances give this guy WINK. You are being watched."

Apparently the subscriber was known to the company as being a guy who always tried to get something for nothing, and the security people knew about him.

Thanks again! Today was the first full office day I have had, and I put it to the test. There is just something about the blinking lights and the sound of a real bell. Not to mention the clarity of the sound. I had an issue with line 3 for my intercom. When I picked up it would have a dial tone, but it wouldn't hang up, it would just go to hold. Once it got in that pattern, it would wink even if the line was active. It didn't matter if I pushed another line or hung it up. I swapped it for another 400e and it worked just right. Now I just have to find the rest of my collection in my parents mess of a basement. I've got a nice call director (well, it was nice 15 years ago) that I'm itching to hook up.

I'm impressed with the Xlink blue tooth adapter too. It even recognizes rotary or pulse dialing.

There is another feature that occurs inadvertently, when a 1A2 system gets big enough (large total number of cable feet).

The lamp leads on a group of telsets can get slightly unbalanced, if there are not enough lamp ground leads vs the number of lamp leads. This sometimes occurs when extra pairs are needed at a somewhat remote location in a building, where a single 25-pair cable feeds an IDF (intermediate distribution frame) and the installers have gradually used up the lamp ground conductors for other things like icm buzzers.

When a call is placed on Hold, the winking lamps induce a faint clicking or buzzing noise into the T&R leads, causing a "winking cadence on Hold" rather than "music on Hold" although to some of us old goobers, it's music to OUR ears.

Perceptive telephone people could identify customers with 1A2 systems, when placed on Hold, just by hearing the interrupter wink cadence.

I would never imagined wink was something you had to pay extra for. Especially since its basically built into the thing. Seems almost rotten on the part of mother to charge for that. Money could not have been that tight.

You need to acquaint yourself with the history of the Bell System.

Every extension, lamp, headset jack, signal button, buzzer, winking feature, and bell-cut-off key were billed separately and perpetually. (Long cords, and colored phones, were only billed once.) These recurring business charges subsidized, through a convoluted accounting procedure, the concept of residential "universal service" to every household in the country, and kept long distance charges manageable.

"Money could not have been that tight" you say? Do you think a farmer, even a few miles from the nearest central office, would have been capable of paying the line construction costs to set 40 poles per mile, and string just a single pair of wires to get basic residential service? The money WAS tight, but businesses in far-away cities paid the 30 cents per month to pay for Farmer Jones' black 302 set.

Without the $.30 per month charge for a winking Hold lamp, multiplied times five zillion key sets, your grandma and grandpa would never have been able to afford to call and wish you a Merry Christmas.

I am not a complete apologist for the way the company was run, I just can't see any other way of having done it.

See:

"Monopoly" by Joseph C. Goulden

for a start.

Then get a copy of the USOC handbook, issued to business office employees and installers. It lists every item that a subscriber could order and pay for.

The breakup of the System was precipitated by a false sense of doing good by well-meaning (?) government officials who just couldn't stand the way the whole "shady" accounting was being done.

Also Google "consent decree Bell System"

So, would the button stay on steady or not light at all on hold?

Utilities have a massive infrastructure that has to be developed and maintained. Imagine the amount of money that was invested in exchanges, switches, poles, line, R and D and tons of different things we never considered. It all has to work, or the public is outraged. With the build quality of these great WE phones, I wonder how much they actually cost to make and maintain. Now, that being said, my grandma paid rent on a WE 554 until 2000, which was not exactly upstanding.

Steady Light on Hold.

There are at least two sides to this story.


On one side you have big city business subsidizing rural service.

On the other side you have shady accounting procedures guaranteeing a rate of return regardless of quality of service.

I moved into a basement apartment in Brooklyn in 1968 and ordered a phone. NY Tel said they'd be there a week from Wednesday. I took off from school and work and stayed home to wait for the installer. Instead of an installation I got a card that said "No Cable".

This went on for months until after being placed on hold for 45 minutes and left there after everyone went home for the day my screaming got me to the night dispatch foreman. He explained that "No Cable" was not that there was no wire at the locker, but that there were no spare pairs in the feeder cable that supplied service to my neighborhood. I would not get service until a new cable was installed. Estimated installation date? 1980!

Lest you think this was a problem of the distant past, I put a microwave shot in to supply GSA with Dial Tone back around 1998. They were moving into an old printing plant in Brooklyn under the Brooklyn Queens Expressway and needed 500 lines of Centrex. NYNEX had 6 spare pairs in the neighborhood and no idea when they would put new cable in. I put a T-3 shot in from Metrotech in Downtown Brooklyn and got them up and running in a week.

Those of us who came in to Interconnect early on remember the dearth of features that Bell offered its business subscribers. One job in particular stands out in my memory.
I installed an NEC Crossbar switch (NA-409) with 1A2 sets for a company on Long Island. We duplicated EVERYTHING the customer had before. NY Tel had a 409 installed too. The customer said he liked the system so he got the same thing again. We did upgrade him to DTMF and he got to buy the system outright, but the big seller was (As I recall, and I'm a little hazy..) Internal Transfer of an Outgoing call. you could NOT have that feature from NY Tel. To enable it on the switch I had to NOT install a wire wrap jumper. It came standard with the equipment. NY Tel would not supply it because they wanted you to make another (chargeable) outgoing call.

The Bell System did many great things but also many dumb things.

I truly believe that the decision to divestify ATT was spearheaded internally by AT&T brass. From the time the court ordered divestification till implementation took effect was remarkably short. I think if you wanted to break GM up into Chevy, Cady, Buick it would take years. AT&T did it practically overnight. I think Senior management wanted to get rid of the RBOCs. Just my $0.02.

Sam

I didn't mean to get people all fired up. I'm just a young-un. (35) I don't know how things were back then. I was only 5 when divestiture took place. Please forgive my ignorance. While I enjoy a good history lesson, the technology of those days seems to interest me more than the business practices of mother. That's not to say I don't care- nothing would be further from the truth- I just never stopped to really think about it. Where would I find a copy of the USOC hand book? Every google search just turns up "United States Olympic Committee" stuff. Not exactly my reading material of choice.

I found this which gives you the BSP's and this, but they wouldn't be the old Bell System USOC codes, just to give you an idea what they were.

Thanks!