Message from discussion Party lines - when did they stop providing?

From: jerry.wh...@btinternet.com (Jerry White)
Subject: Re: Party lines - when did they stop providing?
Date: 2000/03/28
Message-ID: <38dff877.35345763@news.btinternet.com>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 603203846
References: <eZND4.485$Ym1.18859@news3.cableinet.net>
Organization: BT Internet
Newsgroups: uk.telecom

On Mon, 27 Mar 2000 18:43:22 GMT, "Paul Cummins - Off Duty"
<traml...@notmail.com> wrote:

>
>So, to bring some relevance to this nostalgic tale, when did BT (or PO
>Telephones) stop providing Party Lines, and why? And is this lack of 'Party
>lines' the reason for DACS nowadays?

 Party lines went out with analogue exchanges. Digital exchanges have
no provision for party lines, thank goodness. When the digital
conversion programme started in 1983, party lines were already on the
way out as WB900s had been introduced. 

 I was doing exchange conversions at that time. Part of our
preparation for changeover was to build  a complete image of the
analogue unit on the new digital unit. This meant that all party lines
had to be converted to exclusive lines. They were then delivered over
dedicated pairs if spares existed, or over one pair by the dreaded
WB900.

 The main reason that DACS is used nowadays is to meet new order
delivery timescales.

 DACS comes in for a lot of criticism, most of it unfair. The fact is
that DACS does what it was designed to do and does it well. V90 came
along well after DACS was designed. There must be many thousands of
satisfied DACS users round the country who don't know they're DACSed
and don't use high speed modems. And it would of course be foolish to
believe that BT aren't working on a V90 friendly version of DACS.

Jerry White