Is Strowger to be phased out?

[Rev. Green]

The NHS Direct telephone number is to be replaced by 111, a number which it is inadvisable to use on Strowger systems as a faulty line can produce a series of 1's.
Is Strowger to be phased out? Both Strowger and Touch Tone telephones work at present.

[Hopkirk]

Ooh I hope not.

I'm very fond of the old Strowger. We go back a long way.

[Buenchico]

As pulse dialling is now recognised by stored program control software, rather than by electro-mechanical exchanges, it's usually possible to differentiate between a faulty line (where there appears to be a continuous string of '1's) and a '111' call (where there are only three separate '1's, dialled within a given period of time). So I doubt that there will be a technical problem with the introduction of the '111' number.

However I can't see that anyone could have reason to complain if pulse dialling was made redundant. Strowger died 108 years ago. DTMF has been around for about a third of a century. Surely it's time to move on?

Chris

[craft1948]

I thought Strowgers had been phased out...........one of my BT bosses, when drunk, used to wax lyrical about his engineering days in a Strowger exchange....