A look Inside a Telecom Exchange

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stu28

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#20145 14-Mar-2008 15:53

If you every wanted to see what a Inside of Telecom Exchange looks like, have a look here: http://pcworld.co.nz/pcworld/pcw.nsf/feature/22CA172D8192BC98CC25740B00094A44

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#117301 18-Mar-2008 11:21

Talk about prehistoric... I'm thinking to myself that maybe seeing that was a bad thing :-)

gomez

84 posts

Master Geek

#117309 18-Mar-2008 12:14

You reckon thats prehistoric. You should see what is inside one of their microwave linking stations. The only 'recent' equipment was a couple of Telecom CDMA nodes and a bit of trunked radio equipment. Most of them seem to be running old Fujitsu microwave equipment that looks to be from the ark.

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tstone

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#117334 18-Mar-2008 14:56

Lurch:
Talk about prehistoric... I'm thinking to myself that maybe seeing that was a bad thing :-)

LOL, having seen the inside of a fair few exchanges myself I agree that they are not as exciting as people might expect. Maybe things have changed in the past few years but I was always amused by the battery rooms and the potential for explosions in those rooms.

tonyhughes

Hawkes Bay
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#117337 18-Mar-2008 15:24

Thanks for the link stu - I emailed it to my students, and it piqued the interest of a few of them - they are all learning basic techy skills, and some of them don't yet comprehend the scale of some of the systems around. The number of cables was a shock to them.

KiwiOverseas66

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#117344 18-Mar-2008 16:15

fairly typical of a suburban exchange. You wont find any junipers, riverstones, omincore, etc there. Papakura's a diferent story - and of course mayoral drive is different again.

but yeah....all that analogue voice. yuck!

Stu

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#117484 19-Mar-2008 11:04

Quite a tidy exchange compared to some. or at least how they were before I left in the 90's.

Papakura's a diferent story

Always has been!

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Fraktul

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#117497 19-Mar-2008 12:07

MDR might have some more modern equipment but the building is still crappy.

KiwiOverseas66

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#117553 19-Mar-2008 16:25

hehe.....its never hard to find the local exchange in any town in NZ. Best example of cold war architecture we ever had (that and the local police station - must have been the same govt approved planner).

limegreen

103 posts

Master Geek

#117786 20-Mar-2008 16:16

KiwiOverseas66: hehe.....its never hard to find the local exchange in any town in NZ. Best example of cold war architecture we ever had (that and the local police station - must have been the same govt approved planner).

Depends a little on the vintage. I always thought the one in Upland Rd in Welly was interesting. It looks more like an ugly modernist church than a telephone exchange. And to be fair, by far the greatest number of telephone exchanges, including a reasonable number of suburban ones, are still in weatherboard. I just love how all the country exchanges have their own separate toilet about 3m from the main building.

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tonyhughes

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#117795 20-Mar-2008 16:56

Napiers exchange looks like something out of the abandoned Chernobyl region - very dark, forboding, and just that little bit creepy.

On the plus side, those pics inspired me to organise a field trip for my students to the exchange. Going in a couple of weeks.

AllNightNerding

411 posts

Ultimate Geek

#117896 21-Mar-2008 13:19

looking at some of those pictures, and some of the videos on the news websites that are around, its quite funny the sections of equipment, boring grey telecom, boing grey telecom, MASSIVE RED IHUG BOX, boring grey telecom, MASSIVE PRUPLE ORCON BOX, boring grey telecom.

Ig uess now that more and more people are going into exchanges, as well as news people reporting on what is happening at the exchanges, hey any advertising is good advertising.

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