[mdlug] It happened...

[Robert Meier]

AFAIK, the FCC (POTS tariff) still requires telephone providers
to support dial-pulse addressing if requested by the customer.

>>> Guess who still has a landline with a functioning rotary phone on it ;)
>> Hmmmm.... rotary phone...
>> I know, I know.  The Smithsonian Museum!
> Museum, schmuseum...I still use a rotary phone at home:

One fall in the early 1980s, I moved,
at the time when private telephone station ownership began.
(You could continue to rent your phone for $10/mo(?) or buy it for $18(?).)
I foolishly bought the pulse-dial phone, that was in the new abode,
and soon regretted the loss of features.
A few months later, returning from Christmas visiting my folks,
I brought back a Greybar touch-tone (DTMF) and plugged it in.
Being honest, I called Pacific Telesis to report that I now had a DTMF
phone and my rate should be raised $2/mo(?).
I was informed by Pacific Telesis that
I could not plug a touch-tone phone into a pulse dial line,
"It would not work.".
To this I replied, "beep, beep, boop",
having just called them on touch-tone phone plugged into the pulse dial line.
I was transferred to successively higher experts at Pacific Telesis
who similarly informed me it was physically impossible to do what I was doing.
I was never charged for touch-tone service,
though I was charged a local toll call for calling Pacific Telesis.

Since an ESS is much less expensive than crossbar switching,
the entire United States now has ESS service,
except for a few historic sites.
An ESS is a computer that recognizes DTMF signals
during the analog to digital conversion shared by an LU (line unit)
or simply passes through a DCLU (digital carrier line unit)
the DTMF signals already converted inbound.
A customer who requests dial-pulse addressing must be equipped with
an unshared (and expensive) CDPR (customer dial pulse receiver) that
converts dial pulses to DTMF.

Having not requested dial-pulse addressing,
I just tested and confirmed my expectation that my telphone landline
is not equipped with a CDPR and ignores the dial-pulses.

Reporting,
-- 
Robert Meier

  When asked what time it is: "Do you mean now?"
     -- Yogi Berra