New York Telephone - Service Crisis

Service Crisis

Forecasters in the late 1960s underestimated demand, resulting in a shortage of capacity in Manhattan, NYTel's principal profit area. Customers had to wait weeks for a new line or a repair, and sometimes minutes for dial tone on an existing line. The new 1ESS Stored Program Control exchanges had software bugs that kept them from carrying full load. Deferred maintenance choked main distribution frames (MDFs) with dead jumpers. There were not enough cables to office buildings, nor enough underground conduits to install them. Morale was poor in all levels and departments; strikes were frequent.

The response of the company was to hire and train thousands of new employees and to buy much new equipment for them to work on. Underground construction took years, but emergency installation of Anaconda Carrier pair gain systems normally used in rural areas expanded service while construction was in progress. Bell Labs added processing power to their new systems and fixed the software bugs. A new wire center at 1095 Avenue of the Americas and 42nd Street relieved four others in Midtown Manhattan of part of their load, as well as providing the company with a new headquarters for the next quarter century. The crisis subsided during the 1970s and workers accustomed to heavy overtime had to learn to go home on time and get along on their base pay.

February 27, 1975 brought a fire in the telephone building at 204 Second Avenue, at East 13th Street. The MDF was destroyed, disconnecting tens of thousands of customers, and obsolescent switching equipment was destroyed or damaged by acrid smoke. Located at the south end of the East Side trunk cable duct under Second Avenue, this building connects many circuits to Brooklyn which were disrupted. A Bell System mobilization dealt with the crisis, including replacing the destroyed MDF. An obsolete and recently retired exchange at the West 18th Street office, not yet melted down for scrap metal, was temporarily resurrected to serve thousands of E13 customers though existing cross-town cables. The damaged Number One Crossbar Switching System (1XB switch) was cleaned, and a Number One Electronic Switching System (1ESS switch) that had been destined for the 104 Broad Street exchange was diverted. This was the largest loss of telephone service from fire in United States history until the September 11 attacks.