atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums General General Telephone & Systems Information MCI and Verizon

Exactly, Bill. BellSouth almost immediately stopped buying from Western Electric/AT&T for just about all of their hardware, while most of the other Bells continued using the "good stuff" for quite some time.

Richard, when I mention the word "independent", I was referring to all non-Bell operating companies, such as Alltel, Contel, GTE, United, etc. These companies never were part of the Bell System, and thus never followed the Bell standards for materials and installation methods. AT&T and it's Bell companies were the more closely run like a government operation, with identical standards nationwide. It was "anything goes" with the independents.

Right. The "Bell Standards" didn't apply to the others, but many did follow the standards, as far as line and circuit conditioning, not plant construction and maintenance. I did do a little contracting for GTE for a few months and their safety standards were identical to the Bells. AT&T being run like the government is very true, all companies, within the company, paid the head company. Western Electric would sell an item to a Bell at greatly inflated prices, which would be shown as equipment depreciation at the Bell and in the profit books for the head (AT&T), it was all funny money and they would make it several times over on each product.

In case anyone was wondering:

at&t local is still using both 5ess switchs and nortel dms switchs. as far as the long distance side of the house they throw a few 4ess switch into the mix.

Yep. The 4ESS is pretty much the standard for toll switches. There are some DMS combination toll/end switches used by CLECs (250 and 500's) but as far as AT&T's network goes, the 4E will be the norm for a while.

Ed,

Some day when it's raining and you're bored, give me a shout and I'll fill you in on really independent telephone companies such as Contel, GTE, United, Sprint, JBN, Rainbow, Peoples, Home, and a few others. Here in Kansas before 1984 there were 72 other telephone companies besides SWBT. REA/RUS was their "standards".

Anyway, that's just a hint. Boring, rainy day stuff.

KLD

Oh, Ken, I have been all over the country and seen some real craftsmanship! REA was the standard they followed to get loans guaranteed by the federal government, but not the law BSP's were. I live in a former Contel/GTE area that's now Verizon and their workmanship on plant was (still is) nothing short of a joke.

By the way, it's supposed to rain tomorrow here. Tag, your'e it.

I have a lot of switches in my back room. Guess what I use them for. Hmmm.....

I have a question regarding Qwest. I know they are in some financial problems and lawsuits, so how is it that they can practically give bandwidth away for almost nothing??? I am running into this issue in trying to quote a possible customer and Qwest is offering absolutely insane pricing that I have never heard of.

I haven't seen much lately on their problems. I know Natcheo (sp) is up for trail soon, unless a deals been made I haven't heard about. They did make a bid for MCI so must have some stashed somewhere. Or maybe they have nothing to loose.