Fascist AT&T COCOT payphone
David Lesher
>Funny thing happened the other day on my private phone.
>I had to reach a number in the 216-650 exchange from my 216-661 and
>wasn't sure whether it was local. I dialed the seven digits and got
>the "TelAmerica Operator," certain that this was not my party.
>Still trying to figure that out.
Aliens from Venus....
Tom Farley
Further confusing this madness is the fact that W.E. housings are highly
sought after still. There is an ongoing trade in putting in COCOT mechanisms
into these high quality housings, rather than the cheaper Quadrum Telecom
box which is used for most COCOTs. Want to go further into this? Send for
Protel's information package. You'll get about 20 pages of product descript-
ions, a virtual field guide to common private payphone parts and
terminology. You'll even get some exploded COCOT diagrams. Which is nice.
Protel Inc., 4150 Kidron Road, Lakeland, FL 33811
(813) 644-5558
DON'T TELL THEM I TOLD YOU!
Tom Farley, private line
Ed Ellers
>I've seen COCOTs in Pac Bell areas that look almost like "the real thing",
>including a logo on top of the 'booth' that's the same color and very similar
>in design to that of Pac Bell.
And how about the COCOTS in Washington, D.C. (Bell Atlantic territory) that are
supplied by Atlantic Telco, complete with Bell System-style insert cards with
the Atlantic Telco name in the same place you'd expect to find "C&P Telephone?"
Cute, huh?
Ed Ellers
>In Houston you have to look at the instruction card. There's a line that says
>"Long distance service for this phone is provided by <whoever>". That's the
>only clue. I always complain to the establishment.
That doesn't match up -- a COCOT can be presubscribed to AT&T, MCI or Sprint,
and a telco-installed pay phone can be presubscribed to some slimeball AOS
operation. It's the choice of whoever ordered the service.
A good rule is that a Bell company will always have its name on the insert card
on the phone -- this was true even before the AT&T divestiture -- and so will a
GTE operating company and most other independents.
Peter da Silva
Ed Ellers <edel...@delphi.com> wrote:
> Peter da Silva <pe...@nmti.com> writes:
> >In Houston you have to look at the instruction card. There's a line that says
> >"Long distance service for this phone is provided by <whoever>". That's the
> >only clue. I always complain to the establishment.
> That doesn't match up -- a COCOT can be presubscribed to AT&T, MCI or Sprint,
> and a telco-installed pay phone can be presubscribed to some slimeball AOS
> operation. It's the choice of whoever ordered the service.
Yes, and if it's a slimeball AOS I complain to whoever ordered the service.
--
Peter da Silva `-_-'
Network Management Technology Incorporated 'U`
1601 Industrial Blvd. Sugar Land, TX 77478 USA
+1 713 274 5180 "Har du kramat din varg idag?"
GLewis9999
or even NYNEX or Bell Atlantic or whatever payphones that have a faceplate
placard, that tells you who provides local and who provides long distance,
is sometimes wrong. I have had the experience of going to the same
payphone and finding out after the "boing" that it wasn't the carrier the
placard said it was. I don't know how the RBOC's figure out who gets what
for how long and when, for their own payphones, but they must do an LD
shuffle at prescribed intervals. If anybody knows why, I'd like to know.