TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Re: Bell System Competition: Private Telephone Networks


Re: Bell System Competition: Private Telephone Networks


Julian Thomas (jt@withheld)
Sat, 23 Oct 2004 21:37:01 -0400

(as usual, please obscure my email - thanks).

In <1098564678.198.7892.m12@yahoogroups.com>, on 10/23/04 at 08:51 PM,
telecom-news@yahoogroups.com typed:

> Blurring the picture even further, there were big companies that had
> their own telephone systems, but using lines leased from Bell and
> connecting with the Bell public system. When I worked for G.E. circa
> 1967 there was such a system -- I don't remember now what the name of it
> was -- where we could dial a certain prefix and then dial most other G.E.
> locations without going through the public switched network.

In 1962, IBM had a moderately extensive tie line system, with special
access codes between different sites even within Poughkeepsie, and to
many other nearby locations (such as Endicott). ISTR many of these
codes began with '1'.

Later this was recreated as a 'dial 8 [from most locations; one
location stubbornly used 8 for local access and something else, 7? for
tie line access]' and then a 7 digit number within the IBM internal
network.

I believe that later some of the traffic was moved to the PSTN, and
later yet, the dial 8 system was replaced by smarter PBX/CENTREX
systems that would route an external 1+10 digit number optimally
including on a tie line if it still existed.

Julian Thomas: jt at jt-mj dot net http://jt-mj.net
In the beautiful Finger Lakes Wine Country of New York State!
Boardmember of POSSI.org - Phoenix OS/2 Society, Inc http://www.possi.org

If you want it done right, forget Microsoft.

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