PacBell had the best logo

I started Michigan Bell in 1968 as a power man. Taking care of emergency backup batteries and starting the emergency generator. After about 6 months I was promoted to 5 Crossbar switch. The 1ESS was just being installed on a floor that was just built for the new equipment. Everybody hated the electronic equipment but I didn't. It was new equipment to learn. Sometimes the ESS people would call me up when I was working on weekends or holidays to check on problems in the 1ESS. I told them that I have no training on the equipment but if you can tell me what to do,I will help you out. They told me what commands to type in and I read back the reply to them. That started my learning process on the new switching equipment. I Retired in 1999 due to terrible management in Denver. I ended up as a tech on the 5ESS, the 1A ESS, The no. 2ESS and constantly reading the technical material. I was ridiculed about that but I wanted to learn as much as I could. It paid off because I became the primary person for call outs and overtime. Management in Denver pissed me off so bad I put in my retirement papers. 2 weeks later, management called me up begging me to return because I was the only one that could work on the older equipment. I simply told them that they should have thought about it a long time ago when YOU were playing favorites with me and bypassing me for training on the new equipment. Nope, goodbye and good luck.

@@mikefitzryk1871 " I was ridiculed about that but I wanted to learn as much as I could. It paid off because I became the primary person for call outs and overtime." < I see that as not paying off, because you just ended up working long hours and being woken up at 3AM for call out. I was in telecommunications as well from 1983 to 2021. Alot of different aspects. PBX repair, Home, Business Tech. Cell tower equipment repair, Central office repair. I left because the metrics they were worried about did nothing to provide good customer service. After 2 buyouts and the company changing names and managers, it went down hill and was no longer enjoyable. I spent most of my years being on call, so i know what it was like. The last few years I heated being on call because they would call you for stuff that could wait till the morning.

worked for lucent from 93-2003 yea worked on all this the end was alot galaxy power but yea was great

@jason9022 The AT&T PC 6300 series seen in the video was made by Olivetti.

@@NJRoadfan There's a AT&T UNIX PC/PC 7300/3B1 at 1:45, that one was developed by Convergent Technologies.

I remember then too, though being in a different part of Bell Laboratories. Either it was a logistics foulup or a stress test for the network. Why not an email/snailmail lottery?

HA, GR303's! I was a crew coordinator in the Chicago burbs in the early 2000's for the techs that hooked up many a LS2000/2012 to 5ESS switches, and when we had to call in to have the GR303 IG's grown, at first, very few in the STC knew how to do it, so there were growing pains at first. I also hooked up a crap load of TR008's, those were easier to troubleshoot as they were old school and basically emulated a SLC-96's signaling. By the time I left in 2021, crews had about 1/4 or so of the techs actively decommissioning SLC's and removing the field plug ins, so POTS lines were dying a swift death. I even cancelled my VOIP over U-Verse, as they couldn't keep it working anymore, even though my data and video work fine.

I use to work for a company that had a t1 line that wa bounded for a whopping 3mbps of data. This was back in 2010. Right before I left the company i got my boss to switch to a fiber line that was upgraded to 100mbps that was in 2015.

@jason9022 there is still places here in the states that use t1 line for mostly voice its normal ues for pbx phone systems even the modern voip systems will still ues t1 lines the give you about 24 phone lines so ya . i worked for a chevey dealership in riverside,ca they where using the t1 lines for over 10 years before the switch. if it was not for GM recommendations for what speed you need my boss probably would have never upgraded.

@@toshihitsu1989 T1s are delivered over fiber these days with a ONT converting to copper. The main reason it persists is legacy compatibility with PBX systems.

@@NJRoadfan i think where i was it was over a copper line i dont remember how telepacific did it but all i had seen was the data cards they ues to go over Ethernet to our server room. the had in 2014 pull a fiber line to our telecommunications closet we had. but this was all done with at&t system as they where the provider for the system we just went thought telepacific for our data and voice needs at the time. this was under an old part of the city the delearship was in a building that was built in the 40s at the time. i think nowadays it would be fiber but i dont know i have not worked in the indstrey in over 5 years now and i know alot has change in how things are done nowadays

@@NJRoadfan Not necessarily optical, T1 is so slow they often run it over copper via VDSL. Technically, your PBX isn't getting a "T1" but rather an ISDN PRI.

LOL, we used to call it the "Death Star" in the Chicago area as well.

@@poormanselectronicsbench2021 - And we used to mark it up with permanent markers to really look like the death star LOL... Some of us nerds were artistic also :)

I recall we posted a great Bloom County "Death Star" cartoon, which really gave it the name.

Nerds of a feather flock together... I would have loved to have been in on that... But I am a little young... But still I would have loved to be an apprentice to you and those guys working on that project. Thanks for the great read.

Curious story. The security guards would walk a beat at night. They had key stations that would register that they had been at a certain point. One was in our lab. At, say 1:00 am the guard would walk in, use the key. And then use his walkie talkie to report he was at furthest point (Bldg 6). A number of times my 3b20 would power down both sides. Didn't figure it out. A few.monthd later an IL Bell tech parked at the CO in Seneca. Hit his CB to tell the Switching Control Center he was going in. Bells and whistles started going off at the SCC, he rushed in, both sides of the 3B were powered down. Turns out the CD cards (control display cards with LEDs and switches including ROS request out of service, and the power on off switch) had a sensitivity to radio noise (like CB, walkie talkie). So it acted as if both power switches were set to off. Instructing power card to turn off.

I can't get over how smooth the 5E's ring sounds compared to a DMS system. Don't get me wrong, I love Nortel, but there's almost a sawtooth quality to the DMS rings, even the feature rings sound like it's a sawtooth waveform.

Gonna take a guess that you're referring to the Morristown CO on Maple St. It was one of the last 1A holdouts if I recall.

Congrats, Steve! I'll bet you've seen a great deal of interesting things. What line of work were you in?

@@NortelGeek I was a tech in the field. Special Services. When I first hired on in 1977 there were still party lines and mechanical central offices. I have stories to last a lifetime :)

@@steve94044 I bet you do have lots of stories as do most of us that have retired, I started with Western Electric in February 1963, I retired after 36 years service. Last system that I was trained in, number five ESS. Great memories great company to work for, and great benefits. This month next week I will be 79 years old, when I started in 1963 I was just 20 years old. I remember my first task, was running cable in a number 5 crossbar office, Rockaway Avenue Brooklyn. Was not the best area to start working at I almost quit, I remember a apparatus truck delivering, White sheets that we use to clean the existing panel office that was there at the time. When I arrived at the building one day it looked like it had snowed out and it was quite hot, somebody shot the driver of the truck that delivered the equipment, and these boxes of White cleaning cloths were all over the streets. Gave me second thoughts if I still want to work for us electric at the time. I'm glad I stuck it out, in 1964, I started my first ESS School, then went to, tsps, traffic service position system School, ETS, number for ESS, the first Digital Electronics switching system, then number five ESS, and then the last couple of years I was working out of the technical support center in Manhattan. I was forced to retire due to a spine injury I received several years earlier moving, a memory device in a number one ESS office, when I picked it up to Move It I hurt my back and fell to the floor. Little did I know that was the end of my career that was going to happen down the road, after five spine surgery the last one being the longest spine surgery in the United States at the time, 18 and a half hours, continuous surgery, then an additional 5 and 1/2 hours of surgery approximately a week and a half later, due to a severe staph infection. AT&T took care of me one 100%, after the surgery which was a distance away from my home, that would pick me up by ambulance drive me to the Tampa Airport in Florida, fly me to, fly me to Gainesville Florida? I'm not sure of the destination, but they provided me with a c-35 legit, with two, emss, on board along with pilot and co-pilot, and my private duty nurse that AT&T provided she would come along with me. We made a total of 10 round trips over a period of time following my progress, I also received my last rights because the infection was so bad and was not responding to antibiotics. Then I spent the next seven years in rehab. To this day I still suffer from my spine injury and surgeries that I've had. But I was so fortunate that I worked for Western Electric AT&T, that took care of their employees. Today is September 18th 2022. Looking forward to my birthday September 23rd. God Bless America the greatest country in the world in my opinion. And God bless all the people that I worked with during my employment, that are no longer with us. God bless all the people that I met during my life that are still with us today.

I got out about the same time, with the same years. I will say, the experience of working under one company's "umbrella" ( my W2 always came from Illinois Bell in St Louis MO) will never be replicated in the modern working environment of "contract it out", and times surely changed from customer being #1 to "perceived shareholder value" being the driving element, and things that were maintained well 10+ years ago were only addressed after service outages occurred.

I worked on 3B as well as the entire number five ESS, prior to that number four ESS prior to that number one ESS, price of that ETS, and tsps. Before that I was just a grunt in number 5 crossbar.

@@americanspirit8932 I worked at the Northern Illinois Works in Lisle Illinois. First on the 3ESS then the 3B Processor from prototype. I worked with people who came from the 1ESS.

I have remnants of this equipment in my lab today. There were frames that had EV-DO RNC equipment running. On a third row, we have some SMs sitting idle. At least parts of it (basically everything except the "3G" mobile stuff) is still relevant! Though I hear the "3B21" part is running as sort of a VM on some pre-Oracle Sun machines...

@@junker15 Verizon Wireless still has tons of these in service for their CDMA 1X and 3G EV-DO network, wonder what will happen to them when they're decommissioned by the end of this year

What eas it using before VoIP or even IP?

@@michaelbrilz1531 Digital TDM

Well, it is 50 year old technology.

So is the DMS 250 Nortel switch.

@@jfbeam This is true. Time-Division Multiplexing is an "oldie but goodie," so they say. But can it keep up with today's world? I'm not so sure about that one...

Man that sucks.

IMO Cisco is like Bell without the personality. It's expensive, proprietary and everything is purposefully made more difficult.

Same story here, Sprint/Redmond switch. But I figured out, that we sat there working away, while the rest of the world (technology) passed us by. Then hit the labor market, only to find out it's all IP based now.

Shocked they weren't running a DMS

awesome

AMERICAN Telephone & Telegraph

Thanks, Captain Obvious 🙄

Replaced by what?

How you a CO Tech and have a Trump pic? He lost. xD

@@ojsilva1975: The two aren't even related. What the heck you talking about?

@@HelloKittyFanMan. They're all gone where I live, they've been replaced by media gateways. Basically carrier-grade VoIP analog telephone adapters that handle hundreds of lines.

@@straightpipediesel: Oh, that's interesting!

ISDN = It Still Does Nothing 😊

Fast for then, now 5G blows its doors off.

It was only slightly better than regular dial-up.

@@ksavage681 - if it was configured wrong. If it was set up as all digital, it was 64k + 64k +16k and a good ISDN modem could stack them all. You did not have to take the phone line with it... I had one digital only. Later I got DSL on a single line and because no phone line or what they call dry loop, I got 6mb in the boonies. It works good if you can step on the audio band and increase the data flow.

As a cable splicer in the Chicago burbs during those times, I was the poor schmuck that had to condition the copper pairs, splice in the app case, and hope we got good loss readings to get the long run 56K and ISDN's, as well as copper T1 spans working in the boonies, before fiber fed remotes closer to customers bought down the copper loop length. A mouse nibbling on pairs in the wrong spot could quickly become a deal breaker.

I went to that school in the 80s.....

@@linxj6 I also went to that school in the late 80's or early 90's, hired on in 87 so a couple years after that

Hi Wayne, I do remember when as an expat from Hilversum at PTS in Dublin. (1989-1992). You checked some Sim city software just to see how that worked. Greetings from Holland

@@hanvandewal917 Han I remember you. Wow long time, my friend. You made my day.

@@linxj6 We might have crossed paths if you attended a 1A MTSO systems class.

And the AT&T PC7300 / 3b1 Unix PCs with the integrated monitors. I have one though haven't turned it on since around 1995. :-)

I was the tier 3 PC Tech support manager at the AT&T San Jose FAST center. I've looked several times and I don't see any 6300's in this video. That's not to say I didn't miss one but... I saw VT100, an unidentified color monitor and several terminals that might be 40/2 or even 40/4. Also a couple of AT&T line printers but no 6300.

Those might be 6300 monochrome monitors on the desks at around the 8:51 mark. Hard to tell...

@@pauldunecat Might be a good idea to open it up and make sure the RTC battery isn't leaking.

Innovations Subscribers Don't Need ;)

@@ConnectionsMuseum yep heard both of those working on 5ess in Naperville...

I t S till D oesn’t N etwork

@@ConnectionsMuseum and, then, when it started to sell, "I See Dollars Now"

It's sad ISDN never really caught on in the US. Telco's never published it, and no one understood exactly what it did or _could_ do. The added complexity didn't help -- ISDN is a lot more involved than simply plugging in the handset. (even this video gets it wrong: no one did packet switching, so you could only really do two things at a time... voice+voice, voice+data, or bonded data+data. while it was possible to send data over the D channel, it was super expensive in the few places it was available; and it's just 16k. PRI's were a little more popular, but only slightly.)

Shitty software is far too normal. The constant upgrades and reboots - I don't know how people put up with it. Never mind the fact that my PC just spontaneously reboots itself, I take particular issue with OLTs serving a thousand subscribers needing to be rebooted every couple of months. But honestly, that's nothing to the amount of outages caused by even worse software on the ever-critical CPE, craptastic bottom-barrel RGs and ONTs that service won't work without, with a development mindset like a title from EA Games. Hell some of them don't even include battery backups. Be lucky if you can get 4 9s And Metaswitch was bought by Microsoft a couple years back...

Blåhaj is my aesthetic

Not JUST. Didn't you mean "voice telephony"? Also, even if that's what you meant, it's still not JUST that. Some COs still use circuit-switching rather than packets, don't they?

On the other hand phone networks are way easier to keep up due to their relative simplicity

Actually the 5ESS was converged. It handled data via ISDN. The place I used to work had a 5ESS as a PBX in the late 80's doing just that. I remember another place had a Fujitsu PBX with serial ports in the back of the phones; ROLM and Nortel also did that. The thing is that AT&T charged telco prices that simply couldn't keep up the cost, simplicity, and later the speed of Ethernet. Ethernet caused networks to de-converge and then re-converge under data.

The Internet killed the Telephone Star.

@@ksavage681 - It needed killed. Communications under the old system cost too much... Now that everything is data and calls anywhere are all the same, all that crazy BS is not necessary any more. I have conversations with people all over the globe only possible if you had a truck full of money or a ham radio a few decades ago.

Wowww

Sasktel had DMS 100s since the 1980s

I never worked on the "guts" of a CO switch, so to speak, I was instructed on how to program a 5ESS switch IG for MLT testing capability, but , from my experience with a Seimens, Nortel and AT&T switch, the 5ESS was hands down the least temperamental to hook up a SLC IG to. They self reset easiest and fastest if any trouble occurred and at least in my area, the DSX assignment for the ports were sequentially assigned in a 5E, while the DMS and Seimens had you using a jack here, and a jack there, and was just annoying to test and trace if needed.

Are they still in production? In my country they switched everything to VOIP a long time ago. The analog signal gets digitalized as soon as it enters the exchange, and in modern VDSL contract there isn't even an analog carrier on the wires, everything is digital and they put a VOIP client into your router (it's cheaper this way plus you have all the bandwidth for data that is what people care, since on landline you get only spam and most of people doesn't even connect a phone since they are really only interested in internet given that every mobile company gives you unlimited phone calls for nothing). I think in 10 years or even less analog lines will be cut off completely, with the choice for the people that still uses them to either go with a cell phone (that is way cheaper if you need only voice) or upgrade to fiber/copper VDSL.

@@alerighi: So you're saying that in your country (which one), even the PSTN COs are on VOIP, so while they can give better voice quality, they can also suffer from the lower reliability that we've come to know with internet-based phone calls (such as by Vonage, Ooma, or magicJack)? And they've lowered their prices to match those of these companies like the ones I listed as examples? And what do you mean by "analog lines"? Wasn't there step of switching technology between the first electronic switches (1ESS, etc.: electronic but still analog) and the VOIP technology (packet-switching) that was already digital (maybe the newer 5ESS, etc: digital circuit-switching)?

I mostly had to deal with the DLC circuits connecting to SLC/DLC systems installed outside. I will say that the 5ESS reset itself quicker if it took a error stream on a circuit, where the DMS would occasionally need to be "Swacked" by a Switching Center Tech to get it to come back up again, so it would be OOS for a much longer time period . Sometimes, though , a 5ESS would just "stop talking" to a Alcatel LS2000 DLC shelf, and would need to be removed and restored to get it back up as well. Just before I left to retire though, AT&T in it's infinite wisdom, outsourced its switching call center support to centers outside of the US, and things got impossible to restore in a short call, so, I am glad It's no longer an issue for me to deal with.

@@HelloKittyFanMan. Ooma is free once you buy the device. Then hook up a normal phone to it. No analog system needed, just internet.

Thanks, @@ksavage681, but that's not what I was asking. And besides, no, it's not. There's a fee at every level of their service.

You could get any 5ESS service at home from your local RBOC....... for a price. I love all the bragging they do in these old videos about these great services these digital switches provide that nobody actually used.... because they cost a small mortgage to actually get.

@@NJRoadfan They cost a fortune due to Bell Head mentality. The strange thing is many features failed to cross over to VOIP.

@@jonathanfriedel The FreeSWITCH project can run circles around the ESS#5 without breaking a sweat. It does conferencing (inbound AND outbound) up to the limit of what the host hardware can do (40? 60? 100? participants?), call forwarding, call park/remote pickup, status and presence indications, WebRTC with modern video conferencing, Caller ID name and number, outbound (BOO!!) and inbound boiler room call agent queuing, TGML tone generation on the fly, transcoding a ridiculous number of voice CODECs that didn't even exist when the ESS was A Thing, secure voice protocols, text messages, and the list goes on and on. There are companies billing millions of minutes per month running FS to process VoIP calls. Hey, I cut my teeth on ESS#1 and thought it was the cat's whiskers at the time, but those days are in the distant past while technology marches on. These are great times for secure communications that benefit a great many more people.

I and my friend caused a glitch in the system once with that, I think. We used usual gsm/3G phones, we made a call, then both went on hold and then we made another call to each other, then one of use put both calls to conference, then other did the same. After that all calls shut down and our phones lost network signal for some 5-10 seconds. :)

It was available lots of places, but (a) it was expensive, and (b) it was never well advertised. (just like ISDN.)

I'll second that.

You should try working in a step x step office! You'll hear it, alright!

@@olo-burrows And if something really bad happens, you'll FEEL it, too. 😆

@@NortelGeek Iremember the day the 01 cable out of our 355A sxs office was severed by a careless backhoe operator - in a muddy, waterlogged trench. The sound of several hundred switches suddenly jumping and dropping was mind-blowing.

and if you ever stopped hearing the 1ESS doing its thing, you knew you were in real trouble. I can't fault it; the state of computerized switching in 1965 was primitive. That it managed to handle the busy hour until the retrofits to make them 1A ESS was amazing

And yes we did dumpster dive for books manuals and anything else we could find. I was a book worm. The cable company did not like it when I would read to them from their own book on how to deal with a problem and hold their feet to the fire procedure wise LOL Those were the good old days

Hahaha, yet... it's already in your house, nice!

@@HelloKittyFanMan. I think you missed the joke.

@@ttrjw: Nope, I saw that you were being ironic to make it, and then I just capped it off with the realism. I think you missed my laugh.

@@MichaelWallace-oq3wd: By the looks of it, you have no idea of what strokes even are or how they work, mikey jerk. When trying to come up with something intelligent to say you need to borrow a brain. The two of us weren't playing a "game." So the only one who lost here was you. Also, learn the difference between a man and a girl.

Not sure. It didn’t have a date on it. Judging by the clothing and subject matter, I’d say early-mid 1980s

slower probably

Monopolies are not unusual in capitalism. Hell, if you don't actively prevent them from happening, monopolies will inevitably happen. Look at Microsoft in the 1990s. It has nothing to do with socialism. Just with a monopoly stemming from having one capitalist company being the first one to build a country spanning network. Another company could've build their lines parallel to the existing ones and competed. But it takes billions in order to do that so they simply don't bother. Over here, things only started changing when coaxial cables were run to 90% of homes (finished by the mid 1990, my country had cable to all houses quite early). It was only when the telco had competition from the cable company for internet service, that the phone line and ASDL started to become cheaper. The cable company, very capitalist, then ened up the monopoly on broadband internet (more than true 50mbps, ASDL usually didn't go beyond 10 or 20mbps down) . The cable monopoly meant you *had to* buy cable TV from them, even if you only wanted internet or VOIP phone. And only now, when fibre to the home is starting to become another parallel network, are things starting to change with the cable company also allowing you to buy only internet... As long as there are networks that are operated by their one, single operator, there will be monopolies. Simply because it's hard to kick the builder of a network off of its own network. See also: rail networks, electricity transmission networks.

The T1 was dominant for decades because it's what we had. DSL and cablemodem technology didn't come about until the end of the 90's. While fiber optics were around from the 60's, it was always way more complex and expensive - leading it to being the backbone of telco networks.

T1 was king because nobody needed faster for data. Even into the early 2000s, T1 was still a cold standard next to DSL, DOCSIS, and a random pile of in-between technologies. Meanwhile DS3s/T3s were pushing 45 Mbps. The standard for Synchronous Optical Networking (SONET includes OC-3, OC-48, etc) was defined by the ITU in 1988. Nobody wanted them, though, because even in 2000 the 28.8K modem was still ubiquitous. Most 1990 PCs came with VGA displays and 3.5" floppies were hot shit. Nobody was going to shell out for a network link at one entire floppy per second when the Web hadn't even been invented yet. While capitalism does have a role to play (see 1982 breakup of AT&T) this is a story of the evolution of the computer more than anything else.

Radio techs, they could never understand switching...

They are all canadians (nortel fans) or Germans (Siemens fans)

When did "digital switch" and "world" become brands? And why "was" if it's possible to still be in use now?

Es ist wie es ist, Siemens EWSD war das erfolgreichste Digitale Fernsprechvermittlungssystem der Welt. Und "war" weil es leider nicht mehr produziert und durch VoIP abgelöst wird.

@@integrale4387: Huhh?

I used to hate programming in the EWSD..it slowly became one of my favorite switches to work in

@@HelloKittyFanMan. - I don't speak Germanic either so here is translation... As it is, Siemens EWSD was the most successful digital telephone switching system in the world. And "was" because unfortunately it is no longer produced and replaced by VoIP.

Yes, the newer buildings were solid concrete with no windows. The older ones in cities had windows with riot shields on the inside. This is for civil defense.

linxj6 cool note about the windows on older ones- I’m definitely going to keep an eye out for those.

Many COs are built to be somewhat EMP proof.. Cold war concerns.. THe metal screens over the windows I'm sure helped with that.

The older COs that are huge buildings held step by step, crossbar, or panel switches - all of which took up a ton of space. TDM switches such as the 5ESS and DMS-100 took up much less space. The COs that have gone to packet switching take up even less space than that.

@@diamonddave45 a lot of times, they had to build additions onto an existing CO in the Chicago area, to add a new digital switch in, cut service over to it, then remove all of the old equipment associated with the old switch. This empty space sat vacant for years, but is now filled with many different types of equipment, from the popular DLC/DSL systems of the 80's to early 2000's, then the equipment to feed remote Alcatel 7330 shelves for U-Verse service, and lately has a lot more Terabit (OM88) speed Toll (office to office) and some to customers, as well as "FTTP" (Fiber To The Premise) residential fiber optic service. I installed and maintained the "Outside plant" shelves of these systems until my retirement last year, and I can say that CO's were getting filled up with more and more equipment every time I went into them.