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From: roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.modems
Subject: Re: touchtone dialing always works
Message-ID: <2538@phri.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 13-Dec-86 20:41:10 EST
Article-I.D.: phri.2538
Posted: Sat Dec 13 20:41:10 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 16-Dec-86 01:01:45 EST
References: <750@sdcc12.ucsd.EDU>
Reply-To: roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith)
Distribution: na
Organization: Public Health Research Inst. (NY, NY)
Lines: 28

In <750@sdcc12.ucsd.EDU> wa371@sdcc12.ucsd.EDU (Bernd Riechelmann) writes:
> Whenever I order telephone service installed, the phone company asks if I
> want to have Touchtone service (for an extra charge.)  I have learned to
> politely refuse this feature , because Touchtone always works, whether
> ordered or not.

	Last time I moved, we declined to pay for touch-tone and sure
enough, our touch-tone phones didn't work ("dialing" a number wouldn't
break dial tone).  Sometime later, touch-tone started to work.  This was the
(212)-643-xxxx exchange.  A few blocks away, I helped somebody move in who
also hadn't ordered touch-tone, and lo and behold, touch-tone phones worked
there.

	In my new apartment (212-636-xxxx), I similarly declined to pay for
touch-tone service and sure enough, it doesn't work.  I'm hoping that some
day it starts to work by itself, but I'm not holding my breath.  I am told
that if the previous user of a line had touch tone, the phone company
generally doesn't bother to remove that service from the line (my current
phone is on a brand-new line; new trunk from the building to the CO,
anyway).  I'm also told that if (when) they take a mechanical switch out
and replace it with ESS, every line automatically gets touchtone.  I don't
know for sure, but that's the word on the street.
-- 
Roy Smith, {allegra,cmcl2,philabs}!phri!roy
System Administrator, Public Health Research Institute
455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016

"you can't spell deoxyribonucleic without unix!"