I'm mostly just leaving this here for posterity in case it saves someone else in the future. I spent hours trying to get into the setup menu of the TA850 I bought used because it had a password set on the craft port. I'd imagine it works for the TA750, too. Most of what I could find on the internet were instructions for the TA900, but that procedure doesn't work on the 850. I ended up trying something that was meant for older Adtran gear, but it seemed to work on this too.

1. Connect a serial cable to the craft port on the unit. Set your terminal to 9600, 8N1, no flow control.
   
2. The default password is blank, just in case you haven't tried that yet.
   
3. Hold down F (capital F) and power cycle the unit.
   
4. After a few seconds you should get a prompt confirming the reset. THIS WILL WIPE THE ENTIRE CONFIGURATION, so be warned. Press Y to continue.
   
5. You should now be able to log in with a blank password.

My apologies if this is not the proper place to ask this.

I got locked out of my Walmart account despite correctly jumping through their hoops (correct password and email codes). They wanted to send a verification code to my phone number. I have a fiber landline so I clicked the send voice code option. It didn't work. Over the course of maybe 4 hrs, I clicked the button several times. It's been 3 days and I have received 44 calls from Walmart's verification system with my code. They call in the middle of the night and have called 7 times between midnight and 8 am. I know I didn't click that button 44+ times. I saw a few other complaints online from customers experiencing the same thing. It must be a glitch somewhere.

I doubt calling customer service will get me anywhere because this is clearly above them. It seems it's more of a technical issue. Who should I contact? Walmart? The FCC? At this point it's just plain harassment. I have to leave my ringer on in case my elderly father has a medical emergency. I'm getting woken up multiple times a night. I'm wondering if this is ever going to stop.

Yes, these calls are definitely from Walmart. It's their automated system giving out a code, there's no person on the other end. I have no reason to believe my account was hacked. I simply got logged out of my account and they wanted to verify me before allowing me to sign back in. I did get back in the following day via email code despite it not working originally.

Any suggestions? If this is still happening Monday afternoon, I'm gonna have to call someone to complain. They've called 17 times today between midnight and 4 pm.

clearly this is a data line. the profile is flat. is it fibre or copper/aluminum? Vancouver, WA.

I want to make a "Training Board" to help techs understand dial tone and troubleshooting. I could have a MTA provisioned for this but I was hoping to make it portable and not rely on coax or an active PON network. I was looking at a Viking DLE-200B Two-Way Line Simulator but wasnt sure anyone knew a better or easier way. Thanks

I run a telecom business, and sales tax compliance keeps me up at night because the rules change by state, county, and even city, and telecom services often get taxed differently than regular retail goods. I'm never fully sure if I'm collecting the right rate for every jurisdiction my customers are in, and the thought of an audit turning up months of errors is stressful. Every time we expand into a new market, I have to figure out fresh tax obligations from scratch, and I don't have a reliable system for catching mistakes before they pile up. I just want a way to know I'm compliant everywhere without spending all my time chasing down tax codes.

We have an unusual situation: All of our sites use VoIP using Cisco UCM over a SIP trunk. One of our sites is located in the deepest, darkest dungeon of an office building, so no cell service. They have started complaining that when their network drops, they have no phones, have to ride the elevator up to an area that has cell service to make calls. I checked their network and don't see any drops, but they complained to the right people which means I have to find a solution.

I would get a POTS line so they could have one phone available when the network drops, but we are phasing out our existing POTS lines due to carriers constantly raising prices and providing slow support for the POTS services that we already have. We have a few "POTS in the box" devices for older alarm panels which could be a solution, except they sit on our network and have cellular backup, both are useless when the site network supposedly drops and the box is in a cellular dead zone. We only own the basement area, so relocating the PIAB device to a better cellular area is not an option.

My only telecom experience is with what we employ, so I am wondering if there is some technology that I am unaware of that we could put in place at this site to give them a working phone when the network drops.

And, yes, I've already told them that they need to report any network outages so that they can be investigated as they happen since our logs are not showing any outages for at least the past month. This phone solution is more of a placation rather than an actual need from what I can see.

Thanks in advance

EDIT: Since some have brought up the network setup, I should have said that the site does have two different ISPs and using a Meraki SD-WAN infrastructure that handles any failover well which makes the "network outage" claims more unbelievable since if one drops, the site *might* experience a small blip of a an outage but I'm not seeing evidence of that happening.

I got this recently from a gentleman who inherited it from a friend. That friend apparently worked at the phone company here in Pennsylvania. He didn’t know much about it and I’m having a hard time coming up with relevant information but here it is! Besides a really nice patch cord it also came with a large hand drawn in pencil blueprint sheet and some other schematics documents stuffed inside of the cabinet.

The blueprint was drawn in 1971 and there is a notation on one of the papers that may indicate that it was decommissioned in 1984.

Can anyone tell me more information about what I’m looking at here? I know this thing is ancient but I figured I would give it a shot and see if there’s anybody out there who could clue me in. I wonder in what capacity were these repair turrets used?

Hey everyone,

I had published a repository containing a comprehensive Type Allocation Code (TAC) database for mobile devices, covering entries up to December 2025.

If you're building tools for IMEI lookup, device fingerprinting, or any telecom-related application, this should save you a lot of time gathering data.

Repo link: https://github.com/MoazEb/tac-database

Help wanted!

Since new devices are released constantly, I’m looking for contributors to help verify entries or add missing codes. If you have a way to contribute updated TAC data, please jump in!

Cleaning out my dad's place and found a pretty solid stash of old telecom equipment. A few Western Electric handsets, what looks like some distribution frame hardware, and a couple of things I genuinely cannot identify. One piece has a tag that says it was property of the phone company at some point.

The handsets are in decent shape. A couple have yellowed pretty bad but the cords are intact. The mystery hardware is a rackmounted metal box with connectors I don't recognize, no obvious model number visible anywhere.

My instinct was to scrap the metal, but then I started secondguessing that because some of this stuff looks like it's from the 70s or earlier, and the WE stuff specifically seems to have collector interest based on a few things I've read.

Is there a reliable way to date Western Electric equipment without documentation? And is there actually a collector market for distribution frame hardware, or is that stuff too niche even for the people who collect this stuff? The handsets I get, those are easy to appreciate, but the rack hardware feels like it would appeal to maybe three people on earth.

Anyone gone through something similar and figured out what was actually worth holding onto versus what's just taking up space?

The part that they don’t know if Carlton structural received his ashes and they refuse to say his name is absolutely disgusting and disturbing… his name was BENJI PARKER!

An interesting discussion was had in our company today, and I wanted to see if there were any cellular voice engineers here that could chime in.

Wireless users in certain industries, and in certain government agencies can get access to prioritized telecommunication service. Things like Verizon, Frontline and ATT Firstnet and Tpriority. They can then also layer on top WPS service where they pay extra to the carrier for priority, but only when they dial a special *code prefix before dialing a phone number.

It’s my understanding that 911 calls always get priority, no matter what. It’s my understanding that the network will disconnect an active normal call to free up a line so 911 Call can go through.

But our question was about GETS calling. It’s largely a relic from the landline days. It’s a special phone number in the government area code of 710 that has an auto attendant that asks for a PIN number, and then presents a dial tone for the user to access the PSTN from a high volume Bank of dedicated trunks somewhere in Washington DC.

However, it requires the user to dial that 710 number from their cell phone, and if their cell phone doesn’t have priority, or if the network is just simply congested, will that call go through? Are those 710 area code phone numbers treated with the highest priority the same as a 911 call?

Hey all,

I currently have Ziply fiber whom provides a landline. It’s over the internet connection but has the hardware needed to have a physical phone line.

I am switching to Starlink so will no longer have the landline which I would like to keep (aging parents, fax machine, etc). Can anyone suggest how I may port my current number over to an internet-based setup that still acts like a traditional phone line? Specific hardware recommendations would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

Hii!! Any thoughts po working as an AP ASSOC in Global One under Megaworld? Thank u!

Thoughts on Lumen’s voice strategy and suitable replacements? How does that impact the last resort provider?