[AMRadio] Landline vs cell

[W. Harris]

Way back in my days of employment as a Customer Engineer with a major computer company, one of the accounts I was assigned to was the major phone company for the southwest. The CE room where we kept our supplies and test equipment was in the back of one of the relay rooms. We used to clip a high impedance ear phone across relays and listen in. You got to hear some really interesting conversations, especially on the hooker phone lines.

One prank we used to pull as kids was to dial up a random number out of the phone book and pretend we were from the phone company (always got the kid with the most adult sounding voice). When the party answered we would tell them we were doing phone line maintenance and ask them  if they would put the receiver down, step away and leave it for a few minutes while we blow out the lines.


Bill - K5MIL

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I can remember years ago, sometimes faint conversations could be heard in
the background, especially during long-distance calls. It seemed to be more
noticeable at times, perhaps after a heavy rainstorm somewhere in the
country.  I vaguely remember hearing about a fad amongst adolescents, to
dial  some service number that was supposed to be known only to telephone
repair personnel but somehow got  leaked to the public. You could dial that
number and after the dial tone went away,  hear faint cross-talk from phone
conversations in other parts of the country. Kids would shout their phone
number into the mouthpiece, and occasionally someone somewhere else would
copy it and dial back, and conversations would ensue between total
strangers, kind of like ham radio or on-line chat where you never knew whom
you might be hooking up with.


Don k4kyv

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