1A Voice Storage System: Office Engineering, Maintenance, and Reliability

The 1A Voice Storage System (1A vss) comprises a new functional node in the telephone network, which will provide a number of new services classified generally as Custom Calling Services II (ccs II). These services provide the means for conveying voice messages between customers who do not happen to be at their telephones at the same time. A conventional telephone switching office mediates communication between two parties by setting up a connection over which they may converse. Unlike a switching office, the 1A vss takes on the role of one of the conversing parties. In the course of handling a typical call, the 1A vss receives input control signals at various times, outputs system announcements in response, and either records or retrieves customer messages. 885 The quality of service is important; yet, this type of communication is complex; there are many opportunities for system malperformance to disrupt the call. The following paragraphs introduce several factors that contribute to high quality service; they are expanded upon in the remainder of this article. Office Engineering, which is covered in Section II, is the process through which a Bell operating company (BOC) decides specifically what equipment to order to provide ccs II.1 Inherent in the process are estimates of the amount of traffic to be expected as a function of time. This information is derived from market studies which project the expected usage of specific services in specific customer sectors. Once a system is put into service, however, it is important to obtain feedback which will allow the early usage estimates to be examined in light of actual market acceptance.