partly offtopic, but need feed back now.

[Gary Kline]

On Tue, Jan 12, 2010 at 12:19:19AM -0500, Jon Radel wrote:
> Gary Kline wrote:
> 
> >according to him, on each one copper circuit, there were two unused wires 
> >that
> >could be used for a second phone number.  so that afternoon I had a dialup 
> >line
> >and the house had a voice line.
> 
> Or more....
> 
> Each POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) line takes one copper pair.  The 
> wiring inside your house probably has two pairs, 


	AH. yes, this is what the guy told me.  he used all of the wires and I 
	was able to connect my FreeBSD 2.0.5 with work.  and call in to work
	too.   :-)


> which can either be 
> used for 2 lines or for 1 line plus power to light the dial of your 
> Princess phone.  If your wiring is of the right vintage you might even 
> have the old transformer for providing the power dangling somewhere. 


	LOL.  I have no idea what kind of wiring this place had, but it was
	built in 1994; a spec house that we bought several month later.  I do
	remember the Princess phonese...  hadn't thought-of for decades, tho.

	So then some of the wires might have been used for current??  I didn't
	know that.  the installer told me that two were for voice; the other
	two were ground.  hmmm.  I know that there has to be some juice in the
	wires, but never had any idea how much.  right now, our one voice ckt
	had 3 Costco phones plugged in and they have LEDs.  oH, wait, there's a
	wire to a small xformer that plugs into the wall....  


> The 
> wiring up to your house probably has some even number of pairs.  I think 
> I have a 4-pair and a 6-pair at this point, though most are no longer 
> used (I'm down to a single POTS and a single T1, way down from my high 
> point).


	If I could afford a T1, I'd go for that.  but really it would be
	idioic.  overkill.  I'm happy with what I have from qwest [period]


> 
> >
> >if I'm not mistaken, there are some Qwest people amongst this group.  I 
> >would
> >like to know if what the telephone installer told me 14 years ago was 
> >true, and
> >also, if it is likely unchanged.
> >
> 
> Well, pretty much unchanged other than that all the local exchange 
> carriers that actually run copper wire to houses are eager to get out of 
> that business to one extent or another.  



	Why?  not enough money?  I can see where copper could be ttoo costly;
	where fiber would be much better.   but then I'm thinking of the
	situation where the copper runs only a hundred meter at most.  

> I don't follow this closely, 
> but I think AT&T is the only one to have actually gone public with a 
> request to the FCC to set a date when they can drop POTS lines forever.
> 


	there was a show, Laugh-In, where Lilly Tomlin made fun of 'the phone
	company' ... but the situation has changed completely in 35-40 years. 
	I'm dating myself, but facts is fax.


> >
> >at any rate, within four hours, the cable company will take ownership of 
> >the
> >second voice line.  I think it is just one physical circuit split in two 
> >by a
> >clever tech.
> 
> Hmmmm....if you're doing the standard thing, and porting your phone 
> number to the cable company, they'll have to put some equipment of their 
> own on or in your house.  They don't really take ownership of the 
> "line", just the number.


	the guy put in an RCA "VOIP" box.   my daughter net connection is
	running from the wall to the box, her cat5 cable plugs into the box.  I
	dont know how he got the other voice line working.  voodo?

	I saw him in the corner where the cable to our tv set is, but had no
	idea what he was doingt there.   all I see is the voip box and the
	comcast wire from the second wall ckt.  [?]


> 
> See if you can get the tech to make real sure that your two inside pairs 
> are well isolated so maybe you can get rid of the problem of ring 
> voltage leaking from one to the other.  He'll probably just detach one 
> of your inside pairs from Qwest and hook it up to his box, assuming he 
> doesn't just wave his hands and tell you plug your phone in "here" and 
> go away.
> 


	my speech is too messed up, but my wife spent 13 hours on saturday
	talking to comcast who said it was quest///qwest's problem; then she
	talked to qwest for countless hours with my typing at her from my
	display.    we talked to call centers all ovr the globe to people who
	had never heard of unix and barely even linux.....  

	I was going to roll over to the lines outside but they are too far for
	me to see anything.  I was saying that all comcast needed to do was to
	undo what the installer had dione in '95....    but then there would be
	no cable phone/internet service since it was [is?] ONE F-LOUSY ckt.  

	I expect things to go dead here in about 20 minutes.  I mean my site.  
	nobody will believe me until that actually happens.    all they believe
	is what they read off their computer displays......


> -- 
> 
> --Jon Radel
> jon at radel.com



-- 
 Gary Kline  kline at thought.org  http://www.thought.org  Public Service Unix
        http://jottings.thought.org   http://transfinite.thought.org
    The 7.79a release of Jottings: http://jottings.thought.org/index.php