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Vintage Telephony and Telecomms Vintage Telephones, Telephony and Telecomms Equipment |
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20th Jul 2021, 10:15 pm | #41 | |
Dekatron
Join Date: May 2010
Location: Greater Manchester, UK.
Posts: 18,725
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Re: Telephone with Mercury button
Quote:
Interesting that... Those Vanderhoff boxes, were they wall mounted cabinets about the size of a microwave oven? I saw a few, but they were installed before I got involved with office telecoms in about 1990. Now, you mention dialling a * before the PIN, that wasn't normally necessary on the 2200 service... ...except I remember one service call where I was trying to programme the 10 digit PIN from the Mercury paperwork provided by the customer. I couldn't get it to work, and had to ring the helpdesk for assistance. It transpired that this customer was an early adopter of the service, and although they were issued with a 10 digit number, they only expected 8 to be sent, due to the limitations of their original equipment, and I was asked to try the "star star trick" which meant substituting the first two digits with ** which worked. This was 30 years ago and I may have got the detail wrong. Yes, 131 worked from phone boxes, I always thought that was strange, I suppose it was an OFTEL requirement for a level playing field etc, but customers didn't use the facility or even know it was there. I bet there was a measure of fraud because of it. The other odd thing about the 2200 service is how long it lasted, I can't remember exactly when 131 stopped returning the dial-tone, but at a guess I would say within the last five years. Who was still using it I wonder? If you dialled the test PIN 131-123456 you would get "A test PIN was used to dial this number. Cable & Wireless customers benefit from..." etc, etc. and gave an 0500 number that was not recognised if you dialled it.
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-- Graham. G3ZVT Last edited by Graham G3ZVT; 20th Jul 2021 at 10:30 pm. |
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20th Jul 2021, 10:23 pm | #42 | |
Heptode
Join Date: Jul 2016
Location: Portland, Dorset, UK.
Posts: 874
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Re: Telephone with Mercury button
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I know there was a case study on it from the installer but cannot find it online. |
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21st Jul 2021, 2:44 pm | #43 |
Dekatron
Join Date: Nov 2003
Location: Heckmondwike, West Yorkshire, UK.
Posts: 9,643
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Re: Telephone with Mercury button
Put simply Mercury had what we called trunk access nodes (TANs) in strategic locations, initially London and Birmingham. These expanded via the railway network mainly, although at least one canal was used. TANs fed distribution nodes (DNs), which in turn fed the customers. It wasn't just cost savings, which were a moving target anyway, but diversity both private and national was also a factor. Really important sites can have triple diversity.
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21st Jul 2021, 6:05 pm | #44 | |
Dekatron
Join Date: May 2010
Location: Greater Manchester, UK.
Posts: 18,725
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Re: Telephone with Mercury button
Quote:
Energis exploited a different route, by cleverly wrapping their fibre cable along the "earth" cable at the top of the National Grid's pylons.
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21st Jul 2021, 7:20 pm | #45 |
Nonode
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Nuneaton, Warwickshire, UK.
Posts: 2,039
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Re: Telephone with Mercury button
When I first joined the Switched Network Management Centre, in 1991, there were incidents of rogues pulling fibre optic cable out of ducting at the side of the main London North East railway line. The would pull the cables across the track, thinking it was copper and wait for the train to sever them. This caused problems for Mercury as, back then, they had no diversity to Scotland. This meant they had to, embarrassingly , ask BT to route traffic for them while repair were done.
Cheers Aub
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21st Jul 2021, 7:26 pm | #46 |
Nonode
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Nuneaton, Warwickshire, UK.
Posts: 2,039
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Re: Telephone with Mercury button
They also used to ban traffic to certain countries because of fraudulent use of Auth
Codes on the 131 service. These fraudsters would have a room full of people fiddling, the long time consuming way, until they managed to get a working code. Then , on one occasion I recal, some poor young uni student, in a flat in London, received a bill of £1500 for these hacked calls, pretty much all to one country. Aub
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21st Jul 2021, 7:34 pm | #47 |
Heptode
Join Date: Oct 2006
Location: Leeds, West Yorkshire, UK.
Posts: 598
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Re: Telephone with Mercury button
I am amazed this thread is still going. All I wanted to know was the function of the Mercury button!
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21st Jul 2021, 7:44 pm | #48 |
Nonode
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Nuneaton, Warwickshire, UK.
Posts: 2,039
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Re: Telephone with Mercury button
Yes, it's evoked many memories. I'm glad you asked the original question 🙂
Cheers Aub
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Life's a long song, but the tune ends too soon for us all. |
22nd Jul 2021, 6:40 am | #49 | |
Heptode
Join Date: Jan 2008
Location: Durham, County Durham, UK.
Posts: 826
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Re: Telephone with Mercury button
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Eventually Mercury laid their own fibre up the A697 with diversity up the west coast via the IoM and across the A69. By this time technology had improved and the distance between repeaters was much greater. This network is still used today. John |
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22nd Jul 2021, 10:55 pm | #50 | ||
Nonode
Join Date: Oct 2014
Location: West Midlands, UK.
Posts: 2,181
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Re: Telephone with Mercury button
Quote:
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22nd Jul 2021, 11:14 pm | #51 |
Dekatron
Join Date: May 2010
Location: Greater Manchester, UK.
Posts: 18,725
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Re: Telephone with Mercury button
Another thing I remember that from a KC line (Hull) you got the Mercury dial tone by just dialling 13.
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23rd Jul 2021, 7:08 am | #52 |
Heptode
Join Date: Jan 2008
Location: Durham, County Durham, UK.
Posts: 826
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Re: Telephone with Mercury button
Another way to test the blue button/131/132 and later CPS was routing correctly was to dial the speaking clock, at the time the BT speaking clock was male and the Mercury one female.
Out of interest its only recently that the final Mercury (now owned by Vodafone) System Xs were switched off, they have been replaced by IP Session Controllers providing SIP connectivity to businesses. Vodafone no longer support direct ISDN connections but CPS is still used on BT ISDNs but this will end when BT turn off their 'PSTN'. John |
23rd Jul 2021, 3:12 pm | #53 |
Dekatron
Join Date: Nov 2003
Location: Heckmondwike, West Yorkshire, UK.
Posts: 9,643
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Re: Telephone with Mercury button
The Leeds switch (exchange) was Nortel, although I only visited occasionally. What a difference a few years have made!
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23rd Jul 2021, 5:06 pm | #54 |
Nonode
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Nuneaton, Warwickshire, UK.
Posts: 2,039
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Re: Telephone with Mercury button
Yes, IIRC, Nortel DMS 100 switches were used to host the 131 service and held the authcodes. The Nortel switches also provided the VPN service for corporate customers. The network was fully meshed, but was then re architected to be heirachical, using local and trunk nodes.
Cheers Aub
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