| Nortel payphones | |
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| N233H 3 Slot Pay Phone | |
| QSD3A 3 Slot Pay Phone | |
| Centurion | |
Northern Telecom (more commonly known as Nortel) manufactured several different models of Payphone over the years. They were most commonly used in Canada, as well as the United States.
Northern Electric, Nortel's previous name made chrome payphones in the 1950s. The same phone was also made by Western Electric.
Nortel Centurion were made in the 1970s–1980s and used coins only. They came in black, brown, blue, or green cases. Initial units used a rotary dial system and later units were touch tone key pad. Coin slot accepted denominations of 5, 10 and 25 cents. Centurions had a coin return button.
Centurion were used by Bell Canada, MTS, Telephone Milot and other local phone companies in Canada. Additionally, Centurions were used by companies in the United States such as Embarq, and a number of other independent telephone companies.
The Millennium line was introduced in the 1990s and allowed the use of coins (5, 10, 25 cents and 1 dollar for Canadian versions) and cards (credit card or phone cards as well as "smart" chip cards.) They were equipped with an advanced electronic coin validator, which could detect slugs or coin blockages. These units came with a touch tone key pad only. A display screen allowed the user to view the number dialed and switch between two languages, where the operating company has a choice of any combination of English, French, Spanish and Japanese. The VFD display also allows the operating company to set scrolling messages and ads, with a total of 20 messages possible in total, 10 for on hook and 10 for off hook. [1] [2] [3]
These units were used by:
Millennium phones require a CO line with polarity reversal for CDR (call detail record) purposes, as well as for coin return, hence these phones have no coin return button.
The rights to Millennium phones were sold to QuorTech when Nortel moved away from manufacturing phone devices, and were subsequently sold to WiMacTel. Quortech has all but disappeared from the public and in March 2014, WiMacTel announced they were the only operator of Millennium payphones in Canada and the US. [4]
The phones themselves are quite complex, using a Zilog Z180 processor with a number of peripherals attached. The whole point of the Millennium system was security and advanced monitoring. All Millennium phones connect to a server platform called Millennium Manager, which allows the operating company to control and monitor virtually every aspect of a phone. The phones 'call home' on a regular basis, uploading CDR records if they are full and reporting coinbox status (down to the amount of coins in a given denomination). The coin vault lock has a small micro switch that can detect break ins, which will cause the phone to call into the Millennium Manager with an alarm. The main housing lock also has a similar switch, which if triggered without entering the craft interface beforehand will trigger an alarm as well.
A Mondex version of the payphone was also produced, it has a special larger display with navigation keys. There is also an inmate version of the card only set, as well as a smaller deskset that used only a card reader. The desk set closely resembled a regular Meridian M7310 office phone. These smaller sets were often found in malls and hospitals.
These phones can sometimes be found on eBay for relatively cheap, though one cannot do much with them without the connection to the Millennium Manager. There are a few active projects which are trying to solve this problem however. [5]
Nortel Networks Corporation (Nortel), formerly Northern Telecom Limited, was a Canadian multinational telecommunications and data networking equipment manufacturer headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. It was founded in Montreal, Quebec in 1895 as the Northern Electric and Manufacturing Company. Until an antitrust settlement in 1949, Northern Electric was owned principally by Bell Canada and the Western Electric Company of the Bell System, producing large volumes of telecommunications equipment based on licensed Western Electric designs.
A telephone card, calling card or phonecard for short, is a credit card-size plastic or paper card, used to pay for telephone services. It is not necessary to have the physical card except with a stored-value system; knowledge of the access telephone number to dial and the PIN is sufficient. Standard cards which can be purchased and used without any sort of account facility give a fixed amount of credit and are discarded when used up; rechargeable cards can be topped up, or collect payment in arrears. The system for payment and the way in which the card is used to place a telephone call vary from card to card.
A Regional Bell Operating Company (RBOC) was a corporate entity created as result of the antitrust lawsuit by the U.S. Department of Justice against the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) in 1974 and settled in the Modification of Final Judgment on January 8, 1982.
A red box is a phreaking device that generates tones to simulate inserting coins in pay phones, thus fooling the system into completing free calls. In the United States, a nickel is represented by one tone, a dime by two, and a quarter by a set of five. Any device capable of playing back recorded sounds can potentially be used as a red box. Commonly used devices include modified Radio Shack tone dialers, personal MP3 players, and audio-recording greeting cards.
A payphone is typically a coin-operated public telephone, often located in a telephone booth or in high-traffic outdoor areas, with prepayment by inserting money, swiping a credit or debit card, or using a telephone card. In the 20th century, payphones in Spain and other countries took locally-sold tokens instead of legal-tender coins.
Bell Canada is a Canadian telecommunications company headquartered at 1 Carrefour Alexander-Graham-Bell in the borough of Verdun in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is an ILEC in the provinces of Ontario and Quebec; as such, it was a founding member of the Stentor Alliance. It is also a CLEC for enterprise customers in the western provinces.
A telephone booth, telephone kiosk, telephone call box, telephone box or public call box is a tiny structure furnished with a payphone and designed for a telephone user's convenience; usually the user steps into the booth and closes the booth door while using the payphone inside.
Telecom Éireann was an Irish state-owned telecommunications company that operated from 1983 to 1999. Prior to then a telephone and postal service was provided by the Department of Posts and Telegraphs, as part of the civil service. Telecom Éireann was established by the Postal and Telecommunications Services Act, 1983; its full formal title was "Bord Telecom Éireann or, in the English language, The Irish Telecommunications Board". "Telecom Éireann" may be translated as "Telecom of Ireland". In 1999, the company was privatised and renamed as eircom.
Automatic Electric Company was an American telephone equipment supplier primarily for independent telephone companies in North America, but also had a worldwide presence. With its line of automatic telephone exchanges, it was also a long-term supplier of switching equipment to the Bell System, starting in 1919. The company was the largest manufacturing unit of the Automatic Electric Group. In 1955, the company was acquired by General Telephone and Electronics (GT&E). After numerous reorganization within GTE, the companies assets it came under the umbrella of Lucent in the 1990s, and subsequently part of Nokia.
Phone fraud, or more generally communications fraud, is the use of telecommunications products or services with the intention of illegally acquiring money from, or failing to pay, a telecommunication company or its customers.
The DMS-100 is a member of the Digital Multiplex System (DMS) product line of telephone exchange switches manufactured by Northern Telecom. Designed during the 1970s and released in 1979, it can control 100,000 telephone lines.
Sprint Corporation was an American telecommunications company. Before being acquired by T-Mobile US on April 1, 2020, it was the fourth-largest mobile network operator in the United States, serving 54.3 million customers as of June 30, 2019. The company also offered wireless voice, messaging, and broadband services through its various subsidiaries under the Boost Mobile and Open Mobile brands and wholesale access to its wireless networks to mobile virtual network operators.
Nortel Meridian is a private branch exchange telephone switching system. It provides advanced voice features, data connectivity, LAN communications, computer telephony integration (CTI), and information services for communication applications ranging from 60 to 80,000 lines.
Embarq Corporation was the largest independent local exchange carrier in the United States, serving customers in 18 states and providing local, long-distance, high-speed data and wireless services to residential and business customers. It had been formerly the local telephone division (LTD) of Sprint Nextel until 2006, when it was spun off as an independent company. Embarq produced more than $6 billion in revenues annually, and had approximately 18,000 employees. It was based in Overland Park, Kansas.
A public call office (PCO) is a payphone facility located in a public place in India and Pakistan. It is also another name in the United Kingdom for a public telephone box.
In Phreaking, the green box was a device whose function was to manipulate the coin collection mechanism of payphones. It employed three of the MF (multi-frequency) tones used in the blue box and could be viewed as a subset of that device.
Lumen Technologies, Inc. is an American telecommunications company headquartered in Monroe, Louisiana, that offers communications, network services, security, cloud solutions, voice, and managed services. The company was a member of the Fortune 500 and the S&P 500 index from 1999 until 2023. Its communications services include local and long-distance voice, broadband, Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS), private line, Ethernet, hosting, data integration, video, network, public access, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), information technology, and other ancillary services. Lumen also serves global enterprise customers across North America, Latin America, EMEA, and Asia Pacific.
Timeline of major events for Nortel.
G3 Telecom is a telecommunications company based in Toronto. Established in 1999, it is a facilities-based telecommunications reseller registered with the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission and U.S. Federal Communications Commission and serves customers in both countries with over 3 million calls processed monthly. It offers long distance, Voice over IP (VoIP) home phone, and an alternative international roaming service which is being offered under the sub-brand G3 Wireless. G3 Telecom is registered with the Better Business Bureau where it currently maintains an A+ rating.
The KX series of telephone boxes in the United Kingdom was introduced by BT in 1985. Following the privatisation of BT in 1984, the company decided to create a newly designed and improved take on the British telephone box, which at this point consisted of only red telephone boxes which BT had recently acquired, the most common being the iconic K6 box. These red boxes were considered flawed in parts by BT for several reasons, including cost, lack of ventilation, accessibility and maintenance. BT announced the £160 million series of new boxes, the KX series designed by GKN, as well as announcing the eventual replacement of all existing telephone boxes. The main telephone box in the KX range is the KX100. Upon launch, there were five models in total. The boxes were produced at a rate of 5,000 a year, with the total count of all BT-owned kiosks reaching 137,000 by 1999, a number which has since decreased by more than seventy per cent.