Anybody ever work for a phone company? I had some questions regarding how landline phones operated in the early 80's. 1. Can somebody have their phone number changed remotely or did the phone company have to send a technician out to the physical address? It's crime story with a bunch of bad dudes that like to switch their numbers up every so often. 2. How many numbers could each line handle? I remember this from growing up where kids could bug their parents to get them their own phone number. They advertised it as, "Look, your very own ring!" although it was the same line. 3. Were phone taps physical devices that had to be placed at the address or could this be handled remotely by the phone company? Any help would be appreciated. The story is set in the middle of the cocaine/crack explosion where everyone including cops and phone technicians was crooked as hell.
1). Phone numbers were assigned at the routing switch level. Telecom in the us much since then. Wveryh Int has been virtualization but it's still a bunch of level 4 and 5 switches that control everything. If you wanted to change your phone number, the company would have to assign you a new one, and it had to still be in the area code or even company code. 2) 1:1, there was no switching. The reasons kids wanted their own lines is because only one person could be on the phone at a time. 3) They were physical devices that tapped into the line itself. Being able to listen at the company level started showing up after 9/11. I was a software developer for a telecom company for five years. I did VOIP, but I learned all about the history of how the telecom system was built. Two-bit criminals would have a hard time screwing with it. The telecom system was designed to stay operational during a nuclear war with the USSR.
Phone tapping in the 80s came in several varieties. The most common was to install a microphone in the phone itself, which was technically not a wiretap but was covered under the same court order. The best was to go through the phone company. Phone taps, more commonly called 'wires', were incredibly efficient in the 80s because phone numbers were static, as were phones. And getting wires on public phones was incredibly easy. The HBO series 'The Wire", besides being a really excellent drama, details the early 90s wire tap issues to a very surprising detail. The first season would be consistent with 80s tech.
