Today's Quiz.         Give up? Here are the answers.

1. Dialing a one before the area code stands for what?

a. North America

b. Long Distance

c. LATA code

d. Priority toll call

Answer: a. Country code for North America or North American Numbering Plan. The world numbering zones (with initial country code digits) are:

1. North America

2. Africa

3. Europe

4. Europe

5. South/Latin America (includes Mexico)

6. South Pacific countries, Oceana (eg. Australia)

7. Commonwealth of Independent States (former USSR)

8. East Asia (eg. Japan, China), plus Marisat/Inmarsat

9. West & South Asia, Middle East (eg. India, Saudi Arabia)

2. What voltage(s) appear(s) on the telephone line at your house?

a. 48 Volts DC and 70-105 Volts AC

b. 120 Volts AC

c. None

d. 10 Volts DC

e. Voice signal only

Answer: a. Line Voltage (Talk Battery) - 48v with receiver on-hook, red wire (ring) negative, 5v for off-hook (with 50-1000 ohm d.c. load on line). Typical phone lines have ring voltage of  85 to 105 Volts A.C. superimposed on a nominal -48 Volts D.C. The A.C. current during the ringing cycle is between 20 and 50 milliamps. It will give you a shock!

3. Tip and Ring originally stood for?

a. Telephone (tp) and ring signals

b. Two parts of an operator's cord-board plug

c. Connect and insert ring signal

d. Ringing and talk-information-path

Answer b.  Tip and ring get their name from the construction of an operator's plug-board plug -- tip was the tip, and ring was the ring below the tip. The positive voltage (ground) was put on the tip line, because that was the part of the plug that the operator had the least chance of touching. Negative battery supplies (with respect to ground) have always been used with phone systems, so that leakage currents to ground caused by moisture do not electroplate away the copper in the wires.

4. Receiver Off-Hook Tone (the signal when someone forgets to hang up the phone) is composed of what?

a. Quad 1400, 2060, 2450, and 2600 hz tones, pulsed at a 5 hz rate

b. Dial tone made louder and pulsed at 4 hz.

c. Busy signal tones

d. Every irritating noise the engineers could find

Answer a. quad 1400, 2060, 2450, and 2600 hz tones, pulsed at a 5 hz rate.

5. What is REN as shown on the bottom of a telephone or other label?

a. A cartoon character endorsement

b. Ringer equivalent number

c. Refraction number for fiber

d. Receiver equalization network

Answer: b The FCC decreed that the subscriber would be responsible for the 'load' their CPE (Customer Provided Equipment) devices put on their phone line. Some guidelines were established; Each device will have a REN ,"ringer equivalency number", marked somewhere on the device. The total of all of the RENs on any phone line cannot exceed 5. Devices that ring at 20 Hz will have a suffix of 'A' added to the REN. Devices that ring at any frequency will have a suffix of 'B' added to the REN. (The older phones with a bell often had a REN of 1. Newer phones and modems are often much less so you may be able to use more than five phones on a line.) Long rural loops may not support 5 phones due to line resistance.

 6. How many North American circuits are carried in one DS-3 (Digital service, level 3)?

a. 96

b. 1.5 million

c. 672

d. 24

Answer c. 672 DSO (64K) circuits are carried in a DS-3 for a total data rate of 44.7Mbps

7. Compared to a DS-3 the data load of an OC-3 (Optical carrier-level 3) is:

a. Larger

b. Smaller

c. The same

d. They cannot be compared

Answer a. Larger. An OC-3 will carry 3 DS3s or 155.52 Mbps ( An OC-1 is equal to a DS-3 with extra overhead)

8. An Erlang is:

a. Alexander G. Bell's mother-in-law

b. A unit of telephone traffic density.

c. A cable locator

d. An error burst in a data circuit

Answer b. A unit of traffic density. One Erlang represents one hour of line occupancy or 36 ccs (hundred-call-seconds)

9. The origin of the Sprint company name is

a. Service Provider Network

b. Southern Pacific Railroad

c. Super Powered Internet

d. Somebody Please Ring In New Telephones

Answer b. Southern Pacific Railroad, which founded Sprint.

10. Dialing the area code 711 will get you

a. An all-night convenience store

b. The toll-free number directory

c. Telephone relay service for hearing impaired

d. Emergency medical service

Answer c. Telephone relay service for the hearing impaired

If you got them all correct you know way too much. We figure the genius level is about 9. Below that somewhere is really brilliant, very smart, smart, OK, average and - - - you blew it.

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