Ed:

I don't know where you want to talk about communication systems, but you should have a place for it somewhere.

The thought has occured to me that if the Y2K crisis is severe and the telephone system goes down for good (both technically and by telcom bankruptcy), then how would we go about restoring telephone service in the aftermath?

It would seem to me that with a little bit of tinkering, a couple of people with some experience and knowledge of electronics and communications systems, some hand tools, and some scrounged parts and materials might be able to fabricate a crude manual, old-style switchboard with a few weeks of work. If this were set up in the local telephone exchange switching building, the telephone wires could be disconnected from the current switching systems and hooked up into the manual switchboard. Presumably the system could be supplied with some sort of low-voltage power by battery, recharged by improvised solar, wind, generator, etc.

I am sure that the old-style rotary dial telephones would work with such a system. Would the more modern phones that you can switch between rotary and touch-tone?

I'm sure that there are a number of technical challenges in putting together such a community telephone service, yet it was first done over a century ago with less technology than we would have available in the aftermath of Y2K, no matter how bad it got.

Does anyone else know enough about telephony to outline what would be the absolute minium, low-tech system that would be possible for a community to fabricate and operate?

-- Stefan Stackhouse (stefans@mindspring.com), August 14, 1999

Answers

Stefan,

I suspect that the situation is much more complex than you've described. Some of us may have problems with the "smart" phones on our desk, but those can presumably be replaced by the simpler "dumb" phones.

You seem to be focusing on the possibility of Y2K problems in the PBX units in an office. Indeed, some of those WILL have problems, and I don't know what kind of inventory the vendors (e.g., AT&T, Nortel, etc.) have available. I suspect that the biggest problem here will simply be the backlog of companies queued up to await a service techie to come in and swap out their old PBX and replace it with a new one.

But if there turn out to be problems in the main switching centers, as MCI has been having with its frame-relay stuff, I don't think we're at a point where we can toss it out and replace it with some of the older technology. Someone who works in the industry can probably give us a better idea...

Ed

-- Ed Yourdon (HumptyDumptyY2K@yourdon.com), August 15, 1999.

Stefan, my dh works in the industry, and he has the same thoughts as you. Right now we have a couple of rolls of wire in the garage, and our house just happened to have been built next to the main telephone switching station for our block. With dh's tools and know-how, he says he can hook up at least our few neighbors. I'll try to get him to add to this one later. We still have the two-way radios, though, just in case. As I understand the problem, though, our telecommunications technology has advanced to the point where 1) manual switches and parts are few and far between and 2) people with the knowledge of how to work manual parts and/or hook up manual stations are few and far between. It's the problem all the way around with Y2K; we've "advanced" ourselves into quite a pickle.

-- Jeannie (hollander@ij.net), August 17, 1999.