UJRefugees.net

Biker wrote: ↑Mon Jan 22, 2024 11:00 pm

Biker wrote: ↑Thu Jan 25, 2024 7:30 pm

QillerDaemon wrote: ↑Sat Jan 27, 2024 8:29 pm Same with the neighborhood corner mailbox that the local mailman might visit once or twice a day. Now if you need to mail the very occasional stamped envelope, you almost always have to go to an actual post office. And even those are starting to disappear. We don't even get mail pickup at our street-side home mail box anymore.

By the 70's around Houston, telephone booths had practically disappeared on streets. Damn near every drug store had a bank of two or three public phones in a very public bench with both a white and yellow pages phone books. And a huge copy machine.

CentralTexasCrude wrote: ↑Sat Jan 27, 2024 9:02 pm

QillerDaemon wrote: ↑Sat Jan 27, 2024 8:29 pm Same with the neighborhood corner mailbox that the local mailman might visit once or twice a day. Now if you need to mail the very occasional stamped envelope, you almost always have to go to an actual post office. And even those are starting to disappear. We don't even get mail pickup at our street-side home mail box anymore.

By the 70's around Houston, telephone booths had practically disappeared on streets. Damn near every drug store had a bank of two or three public phones in a very public bench with both a white and yellow pages phone books. And a huge copy machine.

Can you imagine the insane cost of setting up just one of those booths. Dig trenches for phone cables, install the booth, guarantee to fix any broken windows. And make a profit off 10 cents a phone call. And somehow figure out how to provide maintenance for each one based on phone calls. Hell, no wonder AT&T's accounting system is still screwed up 50 years later.

CentralTexasCrude wrote: ↑Sat Jan 27, 2024 9:02 pm Can you imagine the insane cost of setting up just one of those booths. Dig trenches for phone cables, install the booth, guarantee to fix any broken windows. And make a profit off 10 cents a phone call. And somehow figure out how to provide maintenance for each one based on phone calls. Hell, no wonder AT&T's accounting system is still screwed up 50 years later.

QillerDaemon wrote: ↑Sat Jan 27, 2024 9:41 pm

CentralTexasCrude wrote: ↑Sat Jan 27, 2024 9:02 pm Can you imagine the insane cost of setting up just one of those booths. Dig trenches for phone cables, install the booth, guarantee to fix any broken windows. And make a profit off 10 cents a phone call. And somehow figure out how to provide maintenance for each one based on phone calls. Hell, no wonder AT&T's accounting system is still screwed up 50 years later.

It may not have been as bad as all that. Underneath the streets and walkways of many public area is already a plethora of cable pathways for gas, electrical, and phone trunks. A truck is that huge bundle of cable containing hundreds of individual pairs of phone cables. You can often see a local grey trunk access post in front of or beside a building or in neighborhood that represents local access to part of the trunk. Those, the trunks and access posts, I'm sure will disappear as well when we finally get fiber installed everywhere. A small trunk of fiber cabling can handle the traffic of thousands of old phone lines, or even use wireless, and is much easier to maintain than those old massive trunks.

So likely when the phone company wanted to install a new phone booth, they'd locate a trunk pathway and pull a pair or two up through the sidewalk from it. Installed the booth platform, then the phone set and activated the phone line. Even in the 50's Ma Bell had various techniques to locate broken and non-working phone lines with almost GPS accuracy. And don't forget, Bell then and now is practically a government agency with all the subsidies they get from the fed and states. They also have a big hand in writing regulation and policy. A phone booth was likely more a convenience than a profit center.

QillerDaemon wrote: ↑Sat Jan 27, 2024 9:41 pm

CentralTexasCrude wrote: ↑Sat Jan 27, 2024 9:02 pm Can you imagine the insane cost of setting up just one of those booths. Dig trenches for phone cables, install the booth, guarantee to fix any broken windows. And make a profit off 10 cents a phone call. And somehow figure out how to provide maintenance for each one based on phone calls. Hell, no wonder AT&T's accounting system is still screwed up 50 years later.

It may not have been as bad as all that. Underneath the streets and walkways of many public area is already a plethora of cable pathways for gas, electrical, and phone trunks. A truck is that huge bundle of cable containing hundreds of individual pairs of phone cables. You can often see a local grey trunk access post in front of or beside a building or in neighborhood that represents local access to part of the trunk. Those, the trunks and access posts, I'm sure will disappear as well when we finally get fiber installed everywhere. A small trunk of fiber cabling can handle the traffic of thousands of old phone lines, or even use wireless, and is much easier to maintain than those old massive trunks.

So likely when the phone company wanted to install a new phone booth, they'd locate a trunk pathway and pull a pair or two up through the sidewalk from it. Installed the booth platform, then the phone set and activated the phone line. Even in the 50's Ma Bell had various techniques to locate broken and non-working phone lines with almost GPS accuracy. And don't forget, Bell then and now is practically a government agency with all the subsidies they get from the fed and states. They also have a big hand in writing regulation and policy. A phone booth was likely more a convenience than a profit center.

CentralTexasCrude wrote: ↑Sat Jan 27, 2024 10:00 pm

QillerDaemon wrote: ↑Sat Jan 27, 2024 9:41 pm

CentralTexasCrude wrote: ↑Sat Jan 27, 2024 9:02 pm Can you imagine the insane cost of setting up just one of those booths. Dig trenches for phone cables, install the booth, guarantee to fix any broken windows. And make a profit off 10 cents a phone call. And somehow figure out how to provide maintenance for each one based on phone calls. Hell, no wonder AT&T's accounting system is still screwed up 50 years later.

It may not have been as bad as all that. Underneath the streets and walkways of many public area is already a plethora of cable pathways for gas, electrical, and phone trunks. A truck is that huge bundle of cable containing hundreds of individual pairs of phone cables. You can often see a local grey trunk access post in front of or beside a building or in neighborhood that represents local access to part of the trunk. Those, the trunks and access posts, I'm sure will disappear as well when we finally get fiber installed everywhere. A small trunk of fiber cabling can handle the traffic of thousands of old phone lines, or even use wireless, and is much easier to maintain than those old massive trunks.

So likely when the phone company wanted to install a new phone booth, they'd locate a trunk pathway and pull a pair or two up through the sidewalk from it. Installed the booth platform, then the phone set and activated the phone line. Even in the 50's Ma Bell had various techniques to locate broken and non-working phone lines with almost GPS accuracy. And don't forget, Bell then and now is practically a government agency with all the subsidies they get from the fed and states. They also have a big hand in writing regulation and policy. A phone booth was likely more a convenience than a profit center.

Yeah, but they installed those from the N. tip at Nome Alaska to the Southern point at Cape West. NE tip of Maine to San Diego plus Hawaii. Not exactly a minor project. And that's just the US.

CentralTexasCrude wrote: ↑Sat Jan 27, 2024 10:00 pm

QillerDaemon wrote: ↑Sat Jan 27, 2024 9:41 pm

CentralTexasCrude wrote: ↑Sat Jan 27, 2024 9:02 pm Can you imagine the insane cost of setting up just one of those booths. Dig trenches for phone cables, install the booth, guarantee to fix any broken windows. And make a profit off 10 cents a phone call. And somehow figure out how to provide maintenance for each one based on phone calls. Hell, no wonder AT&T's accounting system is still screwed up 50 years later.

It may not have been as bad as all that. Underneath the streets and walkways of many public area is already a plethora of cable pathways for gas, electrical, and phone trunks. A truck is that huge bundle of cable containing hundreds of individual pairs of phone cables. You can often see a local grey trunk access post in front of or beside a building or in neighborhood that represents local access to part of the trunk. Those, the trunks and access posts, I'm sure will disappear as well when we finally get fiber installed everywhere. A small trunk of fiber cabling can handle the traffic of thousands of old phone lines, or even use wireless, and is much easier to maintain than those old massive trunks.

So likely when the phone company wanted to install a new phone booth, they'd locate a trunk pathway and pull a pair or two up through the sidewalk from it. Installed the booth platform, then the phone set and activated the phone line. Even in the 50's Ma Bell had various techniques to locate broken and non-working phone lines with almost GPS accuracy. And don't forget, Bell then and now is practically a government agency with all the subsidies they get from the fed and states. They also have a big hand in writing regulation and policy. A phone booth was likely more a convenience than a profit center.

Yeah, but they installed those from the N. tip at Nome Alaska to the Southern point at Cape West. NE tip of Maine to San Diego plus Hawaii. Not exactly a minor project. And that's just the US.