Provisioning
Point your coin telephone at our head office and it programs itself over the line. No site visit, no EPROM, no board out of the housing.
A smart payphone carries its whole personality — rates, which calls are local, free and blocked numbers, the number it reports as its own — in its own memory, and it takes a fresh copy of all of it from a management system over an ordinary voice call. That management system is what we run here, for two families: Protel coin boards and Nortel Millennium terminals. You call in from the phone itself; a few minutes later it is programmed and back in service.
Two ways to use it. Program it yourself in the beta, by invitation: set your phone up on our site, open its call-in window and dial in. Or ask us to do it, and we stage the programme and send you a ticket.
Phones we program
Protel. We answer a Protel at whatever speed it calls in at, and work it out from the first sound the board makes: Bell 103 at 300 baud, Bell 212A at 1200, or a 7000's own 1200-baud mode. A download keeps the board at the speed you set. We recommend 1200: it has been proven on a real phone over an internet phone line, and it is about four times faster than 300. If a call-in at 1200 gives you trouble, switch the board to 300 (below) and call in again: 300 is the one speed every board has, and a download at 300 takes about five minutes.
Nortel Millennium. A Millennium has one modem, Bell 212A at 1200 baud, and we answer it at that speed. Firmware MTR 1.7 to 2.x, coin and multipay terminals. Its download carries the rate table, the local calling area, the free and blocked number lists, the idle display and the speed-dial keys. Card calls need your own Millennium Manager: we do not validate cards.
Elcotel is not supported yet.
| Board | Modem | 300 baud | 1200 baud | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2000 | standard | Bell 103 | Bell 212A | Tested in our emulator only, not yet on a real phone. Line powered, no battery-backed memory. |
| 4000 / 8000 | 73K212L | Bell 103 | Bell 212A | The usual retrofit board in a Western Electric fortress housing. Fully supported. |
| 7000 / 7000c | proprietary | Bell 103 | its own | Its own 1200-baud mode is non-standard; we answer it, but it has not been tried on a real phone yet. If it gives trouble, use 300. |
| 310 | its own, or a 73K212L module | Bell 103 | not yet known | Programmed on a real phone. Whether every option means the same as on a 4000 / 8000 has not been checked. If 1200 gives trouble, use 300. |
| DD84 firmware | 73K212L | Bell 103 | Bell 212A | Tested in our emulator only, not yet on a real phone. |
Before you dial in
A line that carries data
Copper is ideal. Over an ATA, see the settings below — a compressing codec or an echo canceller will corrupt the download and the phone will hang up.
A Protel's security code
Four digits, set at the keypad. Our head office signs in with it, so it has to match: leave the factory 0000, or save your board's own code in the beta before you call in. Never send it by mail or telephone — nobody here will ask you for it that way. A Millennium has no code to give us.
An open window
Our line answers your phone only while its call-in window is open: five minutes, opened by you from the beta when you are standing at the phone, or staged for you on a ticket. One phone is programmed at a time; if another is calling in, yours waits its turn.
The dial-in sequence — Protel
The beta shows this sequence for your phone with your own numbers filled in, on its Call in tab. At the phone, on-hook. Hold the PROGRAM button down, go off-hook, wait for one beep, then release it — you are now in programming mode and every entry below is answered by a beep. Substitute your own values for the italics. A register takes one value digit: 13300* is not 300 baud, it is register 133 set to 0 and a second, stray entry after it.
| Enter | What it does |
|---|---|
| 1331* | Modem speed 1200 baud (register 133), recommended. We answer 300 too, and a download keeps whichever speed you set. If 1200 gives you trouble, enter 1330* instead for 300 baud. |
| 1860* | 1200-baud FSK off (register 186), so 1200 is standard Bell 212A. |
| 005555555555* | Sets the number the board reports as its own. Use the phone's real ten-digit number in place of the fives. |
| 25number* | Sets the head-office number to call: register 25 followed by the head-office number from the beta's Call in tab, or from your ticket. |
| *#3 | Starts the call. The phone speaks the number back, dials, and connects. Leave it alone for about five minutes. |
| *#6 | Afterwards: speaks the date and time of the last successful download. This is how you confirm the programme landed. |
If *#6 reports nothing, or reports a time earlier than your call, the download did not complete — see Trouble below. The board keeps its previous programme in that case and stays in service.
The dial-in sequence — Millennium
A Millennium is set up once, at INSTALL, and after that takes a new download whenever it is asked to. The beta shows these steps with your phone's own numbers on its Call in tab.
| Step | What to enter |
|---|---|
| Start | Open the upper housing with the T-key and choose INSTALL. |
| Terminal ID | The phone's own ten-digit number. It is how our head office tells your phone from every other, and how the phone knows its own area code — an ID in another area code is refused. |
| Serial number | The serial the beta issued for this phone. |
| Millennium Manager's number | The head-office number from the beta. |
| Answer-detect check | Cycle the hookswitch when the display asks. |
| Download | With the window open, go back on-hook and press *. |
On a phone that is already installed, craft code 369 asks for a fresh download instead. Older Millennium firmware often fails its first INSTALL and completes on a retry; that is the phone, not your line.
Connecting over SIP
A coin board is a modem, and an ATA that is perfectly good for speech will destroy a 300-baud carrier without reporting a single error. These are not preferences — a download will not complete without them.
Register the ATA as an ordinary extension and dial the number on your ticket. We answer in software, so there is no analogue hop on our end: the audio path is µ-law end to end from your ATA to our modem.
| Codec | G.711 µ-law only |
| Echo cancellation | OFF |
| Silence suppression / VAD | OFF |
| Comfort noise | OFF |
| Fax / T.38 detection | OFF |
| Jitter buffer | fixed |
| DTMF | in-audio, not RFC 2833 |
| Line framing | 8 data, no parity, 1 stop |
Program it yourself — beta
Set your phone up on our site, open the line, and call it in from the keypad. No ticket to wait for.
Enter the invite code we gave you and your email address — we send a six-digit code, no password — then add your phone, and choose a calling plan: a ready-made one or your own rates. When you are standing at the phone, open a five-minute window and start the call-in; the page shows the modem at work and turns to Applied when the download lands. Your call records are there afterwards, private to your account.
- Which calls are local is your phone's, not ours: its own area code, or a local calling area suggested from its own number. A Protel can also price long distance by how far a call goes.
- Long distance is always charged, at the rate you set. On a Millennium, 911 is free.
- International calls are blocked on the phone itself unless you allow them. A Protel then charges your international rate; a Millennium lets them through free, on your own bill.
- Millennium terminals also get their idle display and speed-dial keys; Protel boards their security code and the advanced registers.
Request custom programming
Would rather we did it? Tell us what the phone is and what it has to do. We stage the programme, issue a ticket with your dial-in number, and you call in from the keypad. Most requests are turned round within two business days.
Trouble
The phone hears a recording, not a modem
No call-in window was open. Open one in the beta (or check your ticket's window) and call in again while it runs.
A Protel hangs up immediately
Almost always the security code. The board drops the call on a wrong code without announcing why. Check the code saved in the beta matches the board, and try again.
It connects, then gives up
The carrier is not surviving the path. On an ATA, work through the settings table above — echo cancellation and a compressing codec are the two usual culprits, and both are on by default in most equipment.
*#6 reports an old timestamp
The download did not finish. The board is unharmed and still running its previous programme. Call in again; if it fails twice, telephone us before a third attempt.
A Millennium's call-in is refused
Its terminal ID is not one the beta can use: it must be the phone's own number, in its own area code, and not one already in use. The beta's Call in tab says which. INSTALL again with the phone's own number.
Anything else
Coin services, 1-800-555-0100, or reply to your ticket. Have the phone's number and the board model to hand.