Metroliner telephone article 4129

Stephen Sprunk

That's not the issue. The issue is that the use of services use up CPU cycles. The more CPU cycles used, the more capacity is needed or speed slows down. Slow speed is intolerable in a telephone switch because it means slow or no dial tone.

A switch could have the capability to do any function, but not necessarily the capacity.

That's exactly what they did. Such boxes cost money.

Which was extremely expensive and was uneconomical to do merely to implement Touch Tone.

The bottom line was that in the old days (not now) Touch Tone deservedly was an extra cost item because it cost more to provide.

However, I do agree with someone's else comment that premium services did not necessarily cost the provider proportionally more. A cement factory sold raw cement at one rate, and ready-mix at a higher price. The ready-mix was actually cheaper because it had less cement and filled out with sand, but the sale price was higher.

Indeed, governmental policy for the old Bell System was that premium priced items were to cross-subsidize basic services. People who had a basic phone and didn't use it much were getting a subsidy from those who used ther phone a lot--by government mandate.

This applied to long distance charges as well. They were averaged out nationally so high cost areas were subsidized by low cost areas and long distance subsidized basic residence.

At the time of divesture this all went out the window.

Bell lines were never ever the same in the history of the company. They had four major switching machine types which worked radically differently. They had a huge variety of service areas.

What Bell went for was compatibility, not uniformity. That's easy today with electronics but was difficult with varying switchgear.

Whatever happened to ISDN? Anyway, I know a number of people with DSL and they love it. Obviously different areas with different local companies and legacies will have different results.