Thread: Phone service
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[email protected] gfretwell@aol.com is offline
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Default Phone service

On Sat, 15 Feb 2020 06:34:03 -0500, micky
wrote:

In alt.home.repair, on Sat, 15 Feb 2020 02:25:00 -0500,
wrote:

On Sat, 15 Feb 2020 01:34:12 -0500, micky
wrote:

In alt.home.repair, on Fri, 14 Feb 2020 22:55:14 -0500,
wrote:

On Fri, 14 Feb 2020 17:30:09 -0800 (PST), A K
wrote:


My landline is copper wires.

I like having a landline because it still works when a hurricane hits which can knock out cell towers.

Don't be too sanguine about that. I found out after Irma that my
"central office" a mile from the house, that allows me to have DSL is
a little battery operated box on the side of the road and you get
about 30 hours out of that battery. Then your phone and DSL is dead.
If they are kind enough to drop a generator there you are back ion
business but that took them almost a week. Some folks who knew the
score around here dragged a cord from their generator out to their box
and recharged the battery every day. (It is just a regular NEMA 5-15)
If it happens again, I am going to go up there and ask around.
Unfortunately, the places around that box are usually abandoned all
summer.

So the box has a jack on the outside, or it's not even locked?


It opens with a 5/16 socket.


I wish I could remember numbers.

BTW, we don't have batteries here, outside of the local exchange, which
is a building with a lock on the door.

Once in Chicago I watched while the guy punched in the code to open the
door, and I wanted to go in and wander around, and maybe connect another
line to where I lived, but I figured they would really dislike my coming
in. That's when I was 20. Now I'm too old to get away with anything,
until I learn how to pretend that I'm senile.


The days of the big 48v battery bank in the basement of a phone
exchange with 3 floors of clicking relays and originating registers
and your own dedicated pair going all the way there are long gone. The
local phone company here was United Telephone with a #5 system in Ft
Myers and an old "stepper" in Naples. They were my customer. When
Sprint bought them the whole thing disappeared and they just had a
computer console, a couple racks and the wire bays where the wires
come in. Most of the wires coming in gave way to fiber. A lot of that
switching was redistributed out to those little boxes I was talking
about in neighborhoods, connected to the fiber. That was what allowed
people to get DSL. You can only run DSL on copper for about a half
mile or so. Then it has to get up on the fiber via a DSLAM. They call
that "the central office" when they talk about DSL although it is
really just the link to fiber. Those little boxes have their own 48v
power supply and a battery. Next time I see the guys working on it I
will try to get a picture of the insides.