Monday, April 22, 2013

After the break up of AT&T accessing low cost long distance carriers lines was a challenge

After the break up of AT&T in early 80's   many new low cost long distance carriers came on the market to challenge AT&T. like MCI, LDI and Sprint  The problem was the lines where where not yet  totally deregulated and shared as they are now  and to make a long distance call and save money you had to first dial a 10 digit 800 toll free number to access the carrier then dial the 10 digit number of person you where calling a real pain in the ass. So the long distance carriers came up with a solution a re-dialer  whereby  when you made a long distance call  by dialing certain area codes the re-dialer  recognized these numbers and would then seize the line and dial the 800 number automatically connecting you to the long distance carriers 800 number. In fact Phone systems at the time incorporated these dialer's in a sophisticated  means called Least Cost Routing  LCR where the unit would see where you where dialing and put you on the phone line and into carrier with the best cost.

To allow these units to work special phone blocks known as RJ31X blocks had to be installed to allow the re-dialer to capture the line in the same way Fire & burglar alarm s do. I was often hired by these carriers to install the blocks on mine and other customers of theirs phone systems so that there dialer technician could come by hang the unit and program it and just plug into the phone lines.
With the advent of Digital phone switching and full deregulation where AT&T and the baby bells  had to now share there lines with other phone carriers the re-dialer's where no longer needed and  where shut off and removed  and became a forgotten relic I ran across this old one in picture below  while  helping a friend move his imaging company's phone system .
Old deactivated MCI Re-dialer
But while this era of re-dialer's went away the technology itself is still used today in varying ways in the alarm industry.  need to take over an account and send the burglar alarm signal to your central station but the panel is locked out and you can not get into programming ? Well they make a simple re-dialer you hook in line which redirects the call to your central station and account number .



Also with many phone land  lines going away and cellular or Internet being used again re'dialers or re-directors as some call them are again being used to plug the panels existing dialer  lines into the cellular or internet communicator  where signal is converted from a dial up phone line to a cellular or internet digital signal.
Seems when theirs a communication issue in the field some smart engineer is out there figuring out how to make a unit still operate with out replacing a whole system

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