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AT&T 30A and 31A Some things in common with the Millennium

Started by Payphone installer, May 19, 2018, 03:05:44 PM

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Payphone installer

the 30A was a big development at a bunch of levels, it was the first time that a payphone had some smarts. True it was only a charge a call but it was a smart one. I would classify it as a hybrid like the millennium, here is why. Even though the phone came well before the millennium they shared a common concept. which was talking to a data base as part of the process of delivering the call. The 30A is a very important milestone in the smart payphone history. It did not depend on the Central Office CO) for its marching orders. It has to pairs feeding it one was dial tone,he other was a data pair. The data pair was connected to a onsite server in the basement of the airport. You could listen to the data pair and here it pinging the unit. Remember this was all the way back in1985. This was advanced at the time. The purpose of the server was to validate the calling card and then hold in in a cache for a period of time. At night the crd numbers and call detail and  billing records were downloaded to the AT&T billing group. I do not know it the rating of the call occurred in the server or in the billing process.  Regardless all this was a huge step forward. so how does this relate to the millennium? It used the same concept except it called the data base instead of talking to it on a data pair.

Payphone installer

The 30A was out for a short period of time before it was replaced by the 31A.

Payphone installer

It was a very big change for a telephone tech to begin to work on a set with 110 voltage to it.

Payphone installer

Here are pics of the 31A note the button changes on the front, also the use of a K type handset which was also released on the 3A payphone. I have no clue how many of these sets survived I assume not many. Check out the re-branding at the top also. I have gone to great lengths to preserve some of this history.

HarrySmith

Quote from: Payphone installer on May 19, 2018, 03:10:16 PM
It was a very big change for a telephone tech to begin to work on a set with 110 voltage to it.

I bet! Probably more than a couple of guys got bit by that! This is very interesting stuff. Thanks for sharing it and thanks for preserving it.
Harry Smith
ATCA 4434
TCI

"There is no try,
there is only
do or do not"

Dan F


Payphone installer

It has a 29A lock you just can't see it in the picture because it is down near the bottom under the edge of the black face. Most folks don't know the first Bell Charge a calls had 29A locks also.

Sigmaz

Always Impressive.
Thanks for sharing this one too. I love learning.
:D

NikeTelephone

   Hey there, Awesome read on this Thread.. I recently scored this AT&T 31A Payphone.. i was curious if there was any documentation on them anywhere on the net..or someone knows a couple quick questions, does it need to be Powered to Get a Dial tone from a PBX system, i know i read it doesn't take in coming calls, just curious about possibles of out going.. and which of these terminals in the pics are for the Tel line, i know it does say tel on there and i did atempt to play around with the green and red wires from my Panasonic KSU, but no dialtone was heard. I see a ground in the one pic on this Thread where the Ground wire goes to second down of the 4 connectors.. but the others are blank..
Thank you
Barry
Phones, Who Knew! :)

Sigmaz

 ;)
So glad to see one lit up. Great stuff right there...

Protel8000

Wow I didn't realize that was a little CRT inside! That is so cool. Hope you were able to make it work for your outgoing calls.