TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Alamogordo Telephone Office

Alamogordo Telephone Office

John McHarry (jmcharry@comcast.net)
Mon, 17 Oct 2005 19:28:47 GMT

I finally got an answer to PAT's question about what the building is
used for now (actually a few years ago). It is a private residence,
not very well maintained. I also dug up the original account PAT
posted in 1990 from a tape of Mrs. Fermi's story. It mentions the
building was a residence and in a residential neighborhood.

This story seems to reappear every few years, but it is a good one and
deserves to.

[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Does anyone remember the story in the
Digest several years ago where an answering service switchboard had
been located for several years in a private home -- in the bedroom, no
less. When the answering service went out of business, telco had
pulled the board out (this was pre-divestiture days) but there
remained an 'inside terminal' or junction box with a hundred or so
pairs (mostly multiples which serviced other homes in the neighborhood
but had originally been used on the switchboard).

Telco insisted they had easement rights to that box to get to those
pairs when they needed to do so. The people who had purchased the
house knew nothing about any answering service switchboard; it had
been long since removed when they bought the house. All that remained
there was that 'phone closet' from years earlier. This was in Joliet,
IL, and the people eventually got tired of Illinois Bell knocking on
their door at 7 AM on Saturday morning to get access to 'their' pairs,
so they sued and Bell finally got rid of the box by constructing a new
terminal outside the house somewhere. If I could find the story
somewhere I would re-run it here. PAT]

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