From news.spc.edu!news.new-york.net!newsfeed.mathworks.com!newsswitch.lcs.mit.edu!telecom-digest.org!ptownson Fri Sep 10 03:38:33 1999 Xref: news.spc.edu comp.dcom.telecom:72735 Path: news.spc.edu!news.new-york.net!newsfeed.mathworks.com!newsswitch.lcs.mit.edu!telecom-digest.org!ptownson Date: Wed, 08 Sep 1999 13:58:50 GMT From: usenet@admin.u.nu (Miguel Cruz) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Do Phone Companies Ever Build New COs? Message-ID: Organization: Posting from Washington, DC Sender: editor@telecom-digest.org Approved: [comp.dcom.telecom/db7126438d5790fa9982bae60a648e93] X-URL: http://telecom-digest.org/ X-Submissions-To: editor@telecom-digest.org X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@telecom-digest.org X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 19, Issue 387, Message 7 of 16 Lines: 53 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Original item did not appear here. PAT] In article <7r51v3$tg6$1@nnrp1.deja.com>, wrote: > My phone company is the worst phone company in the world, Ameritech > (I have no choice). Ameritech is a fine telephone company. You sound like someone who's never used Telstra (number one worst phone company in the universe, including all manufacturers and recyclers of tin cans and string), GTE, NYNEX (new name, same craphouse service), almost any of the European telephone companies, or actually much of anything else. Reminds me of a story from when I lived in Saudi Arabia in 1997. One of my co-workers was having dinner at someone's home. Suddenly, three men in ambiguous government uniforms burst into the house. Talking only among themselves, they looked around for a while and then stomped off into the back room. The stunned hosts and guest just sat there, not knowing if they were going to be arrested, or what. There was some noise in the back, and the wife wondered if something was happening to her children, but her husband said he thought she better stay put in the dining room. After a while, the men returned from the back, left wordlessly through the front door, and drove away. The man went to the back room to see what had happened. When he came back to the dining room, there were tears in his eyes. His wife, fearing the worst, screamed. Trying to be calm, my co-worker put on his most reassuring voice and asked the man what he had seen. "Our telephone!" the man gasped between tears of shock that soon emerged as joy. "We ordered it in 1985! I'd totally forgotten about it! It's finally here!" > My question is do phone companies ever in an extroardinary act of charity > build new COs? I'm sure this is a total pipe dream question, but I'm just > curious. Ameritech will really have to build new COs if it ever wants to > equip a significant portion of the Metro Detroit area. Proper COs? They decommission them more often than they build them. However, advances in switch technology are making it easier and easier to use small remote slave switches to service new development areas. If you are in an area of moderate density that is not seeing radical growth, then it's pretty unlikely they'd put in anything new rather than just packing it into their existing facility. Your best hope is probably to wait for DSL technology to improve (which shouldn't be long). miguel