Fundamentals of Telephony

JFMabanglo
Rizal Technological University

Electronics Engineering Department

Contents
I. History of Telecommunications
II. The PSTN
III. Analog
IV. Capacity Restrictions
V. Problems with Analog Transmission
VI. POTS
VII.Signaling: Network Addresses/Telephone Numbers
VIII.SS7
IX. VoIP
Learning Objectives
• The overall goal of this course is to understand
• How the physical telephone network is organized
• The characteristics of basic telephone service
• How calls are established end-to-end, and to
• Demystify common telephony jargon and buzzwords.
Learning Objectives
• Upon completion of this course, you will be able to explain:
• Why telecom networks are divided into local access wiring and long-distance transmission
• The founding, breakup and re-emergence of AT&T in the US
• A basic model for the PSTN and its main components
• Loops, why they are called loops and why there is a maximum loop length
• The outside plant
• Circuit-switching
• Central Office and Customer Premise
• How and why remotes are used; fiber to the neighborhood
• Plain Old Telephone Service
• What analog is, and how it relates to copper, electricity, circuits and sound
• The human hearing range

• The voiceband
• Why and how the telephone system can limit frequencies to the voiceband
• Why two wires are used; Why they are twisted together (twisted pair)
• Tip and ring, -48 volts
• Supervision, dial tone, ringing, lightning protection
• Dial-up
• Touch-tone and DTMF
• Basics of SS7, and
• Examples of sophisticated call routing using SS7.
I. History of Telecommunications
• Invention of the Telephone
• Telecommunications began with telegraphs. Telegraph systems
were the command and control systems for railways in the first
half of the 1800s
• Invention of the telephone by Alexander Graham Bell between
1874 and 1876
• Bell patented his device in 1876
• Bell demonstrated the telephone apparatus over short distances
of wire with the words “Mr. Watson, come here I want you!”
on March 10, 1876 in Boston, and again at the Centennial
Exposition in Philadelphia in June 1876…
History of Telecommunications…
Fig. 1 : Alexander Graham Fig. 2: Chronology of the Invention of
Bell the telephone In Bell’s handwriting
History of Telecommunications…
• Establishment of Local Telephone Companies
• Telephone service began with connections within cities. A
company would establish a Central or Central Office (CO)
downtown, and connect subscribers to their communication
service to the CO using pairs of copper wires to carry the
electrical signals representing speech.
• Local phone companies providing service in a radius of a few
miles around a Central Office sprung up in major cities across
the continent beginning in 1878.
History of Telecommunications…
• Because copper wires are not perfect, there is a maximum length
of wire allowed (about 3 miles or 5 km), beyond which it would
not be possible to hear the other person speaking.
• Thus, telephone companies provided islands of local service in a
radius of a few miles around a Central Office in major cities; inter-
city long-distance communications was not technically possible
yet.
• These local phone companies were either part of, owned by or
licensed by the Bell Telephone Company which became the
American Bell Telephone Company in 1880.
• Its Chief Operating Officer and later president, Theodore Vail, began creating the Bell System, to be composed of regional companies offering local
service, a long distance company and a manufacturing arm providing equipment.
History of Telecommunications…
• The Bell System
• In the USA, these local phone companies were either part of, owned by or licensed
by the Bell Telephone Company which became the American Bell Telephone
Company in 1880.
• Its Chief Operating Officer and later president, Theodore Vail, began creating the
Bell System, to be composed of regional companies offering local service, a long
distance company and a manufacturing arm providing equipment.
• The American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) was incorporated in March,
1885 as a wholly-owned subsidiary of American Bell, with the initial business plan of
providing long-distance service for the Bell System: connecting the local companies.
• AT&T continued as the “long-distance company” until Dec. 30, 1899, when it
changed its business model to be vertically integrated: local and long distance, by
acquiring the assets of the American Bell Telephone Company and becoming the
parent company of the Bell System.
History of Telecommunications…
• US Regulation And Competition
• Until Bell’s patent expired in 1894, only licensees of American Bell could legally
operate telephone systems in the United States.
• Between 1894 and 1904, over six thousand telephone companies, called
independents (that is, not part of the Bell System) went into business, and the
number of telephones increased from some 250,000 to over 3,000,000… but in
many cases, there was no interconnection between the independents.
• For much of its history, AT&T and the Bell System functioned as a regulated
monopoly.
• However, business practices prompted the United States government to sue AT&T
three times under antitrust laws: 1913, 1949 and 1974.
• A 1974 suit by the Justice Department was settled when AT&T agreed to divest
itself of local operating companies in January 1984 in exchange for loosening of
regulation.
History of Telecommunications…

US Regulation and Competition

• The ownership of AT&T’s

local operations was
transferred to one of seven
holding companies, known
as the Baby Bells: US West,
Pac Bell, Southwestern Bell,
Bell South, Bell Atlantic,
NYNEX and Ameritech
History of Telecommunications…

Consolidation
• Bell Atlantic bought Nynex in ‘96
• SBC Communications, owner of Southwestern Bell
bought Pac Bell in ‘97, SNET in ‘98, and Ameritech in ’99
• Bell Atlantic merged with GTE (owner of many
independents) & became Verizon
• US West purchased by Qwest later merging with
Century Tel to form CenturyLink
• Verizon purchased MCI in 2005
• SBC took over AT & T Corp and changed their name to
AT & T.
• AT & T acquired Bell South in 2006. This reconstituted
most of the Bell System in two pieces: AT&T and
Verizon.
• The remainder - US West - ended up owned along with
many independents by Century Link.
History of Telecommunications…
• The Rest of the World
• In many European countries, the national government operated
a Post, Telephone and Telegraph (PTT) company that was a
government-owned monopoly.
• In many countries, we see the progression of
telecommunications service characterized by:
• Monolithic organizations holding a monopoly and the mandate to provide
universal service under government ownership, control or regulation,
• Then the breakup of the monopoly to introduce competition in inter-city
and long distance communications,
• Followed by competition in providing local services.
II. The Public Switched Telephone
Network (PSTN)
• Basic Model for the
PSTN
• At the top of figure is a
telephone and a
telephone switch. The
telephone is located in
a building called a
Customer Premise,
and the telephone
switch is located in a
building called a
Central Office or CO.
The Public Switched Telephone
Network (PSTN)…
• Loops
• The telephone is connected
to the telephone switch
with two copper wires,
often called a local loop or
a subscriber loop, or simply
a loop.
• This is a dedicated access
circuit from the customer
premise to the network
The Public Switched Telephone
Network (PSTN)…
• Loops and Maximum Loop Length:
• Copper, although a good conductor of electricity has some
resistance to the flow of electricity through it.
• Because of this, the signals on the loop diminish in intensity or
attenuate with distance. The maximum resistance allowed is
usually 1300 ohms, which is reached in 18,000 feet on
standard-thickness 26-gauge cable, but could be as long as 14
miles or 22 kilometers on thicker 19-gauge cable.
• This maximum loop length of 3 miles or 5 kilometers defined
the traditional serving area around a Central Office, about 27
square miles or 75 square kilometers.
The Public Switched Telephone
Network (PSTN)…
• Trunks and Circuit Switching
• Telephone switches are connected with trunks. While subscriber loops are dedicated
access circuits, trunks are shared connections between COs.
• To establish a connection between one customer premise and another, the calling party
signals the network address (the telephone number) of the called party over their loop
to the network, or more specifically, to their CO switch.
• The switch makes a routing decision for the phone call then implements it by seizing an
unused trunk circuit going in the correct direction and connecting the loop to that trunk.
• The called party network address is signaled to the far-end switch, which connects the
trunk to the correct far-end loop.
• When the far-end customer picks up the phone, an end-to-end connection is in place
and maintained for the duration of the phone call.
• When one end or the other hangs up, the trunk is released for someone else to use for
connections between those COs. This method for sharing trunks is circuit-switching.
The Public Switched Telephone
Network (PSTN)…
• Remotes
• The basic model for the telephone
network remained up to the end of the
Second World War. With the subsequent
suburban sprawl, it was not cost-effective
to build COs every five miles or eight
kilometers. New subdivisions began to be
served from remote switches or more
simply, remotes, which are low-capacity
switches.
• The remote provides telephone service
on copper loops in the subdivision and is
connected back to the nearest big CO
with a fiber backhaul. The electronics and
optics in the remote connect the fiber to
the copper wires.
The Public Switched Telephone
Network (PSTN)…
• DSL & DSLAMs in the Outside Plant
• In the 1990s, Digital Subscriber Line (DSL)
began to be deployed, using the existing
copper loop for high-speed Internet access
coexisting with telephone service on the
loop.
• To increase the achievable bit rate, the
distance between the modems was
shortened by moving the network side
modem, contained in a device called a
Digital Subscriber Line Access Multiplexer
(DSLAM) into the neighborhood. This
remote DSLAM is usually located in a small
enclosure bolted on to the side of a larger
enclosure called an Outside Plant Interface
(OPI) or Serving Area Concept (SAC) box.
The Public Switched Telephone
Network
DSL & DSLAMs(PSTN)…
in the
Outside Plant Fig. A typical ADSL
installation
• The OPI or SAC box is a wiring
connection point in the neighborhood
where wires in a feeder cable from
the CO are connected to wires in
distribution cables running down
streets. It is also a location where a
network-side DSL modem can be
jumpered on to the existing copper
loop. Fiber-optic and power cables
connect the remote DSLAM back to
the CO and from there to the
Internet.
The Public Switched Telephone
Network (PSTN)…
• Brownfields:DSL on Copper to the Premise
• A brownfield is a neighborhood where copper wires were
previously deployed. In this case, a hundred or two customers
share a fiber backhaul to the network, getting to the fiber with
DSL modems over existing copper wires for the last few
hundred meters.
• This is increasingly being seen as a temporary measure while
waiting to pull fiber to the home in an older neighborhood.
• Eventually, most customers will have their own fiber
terminal... connecting to copper wires and WiFi inside the
house.
The Public Switched Telephone
Network (PSTN)…
• Greenfields: GPONS on Fiber to the Premise
• In greenfields, i.e. newly-constructed neighborhoods and
multi-tenant buildings, where the cabling is the initial
installation, fiber to the premise is routinely installed. Gigabit
Passive Optical Network (GPON) technology is usually
employed, where typically 32 customers time-share a fiber
connection to the network.
• Only one customer can transmit at a time, so the uplink is
shared in a round-robin fashion, and each user is reserved a
fixed amount of capacity on the uplink whether they are using
it or not. This is called channelizing or channelized
multiplexing.
The Public Switched Telephone
Network (PSTN)…
• Active Ethernet to the Premise
• Active Ethernet may also be deployed. In this case, the customer’s
fiber terminates on its own port on an Ethernet switch, located either
in the neighborhood or at a wire center. Customers have the
possibility of transmitting upstream any time they like instead of in
time slots. This is called bandwidth on demand or statistical
multiplexing.
• Statistical multiplexing is more efficient than channelizing and gives
users higher upload speeds for the same capacity backhaul... but
compared to the PON requires 31 more network-side fiber
transceivers, so is more expensive to install and maintain.
• Active Ethernet is routinely implemented for business customers.
The Public Switched Telephone
Network (PSTN)…
• Why the Local Loop Still Matters
• It is important to note that even though today there may be digital
switching and digital transmission, the access circuit between the
customer and the network - the local loop, the “last mile” - employs
analog technology dating back to the late 1800s. Even if residential
telephone service becomes Voice over IP over fiber, or VoIP over cable
modem, analog technology of the local loop from 1880 is still used!
• DSL service, broadband from the telephone company, is delivered on
the existing local loop… by modems in the remote.
• The 64 kb/s DS0 rate for channelized digital transmission systems is
based on the frequency band supported on the traditional analog local
loop.
III.Analog
• Analog Signals
• The technique for representing
information on an ordinary local
loop is called analog.
• The term analog comes from the
use of a microphone in the
handset of the telephone. A
simple type of microphone, such
as those in the handset of a
telephone, has a plastic housing,
a paper diaphragm and carbon
particles between the two.
Analog…
• Analog Circuits
• The voltage carried on the loop is an analog signal. People
then stretch this terminology and refer to the two copper wires
that form the loop as an “analog circuit”, which is not very
accurate. The only thing analog in this story is the method for
representing speech on copper wires using electricity.
• It would be more precise to call the loop “two copper wires
that were designed to carry a voltage that is an analog of the
strength of the sound pressure waves coming out of the
speaker’s face”.
• It is possible to use digital techniques on the same
copper wires.
IV.Capacity Restrictions
• To represent speech on copper wires using an
analog, the questions would be: how accurate
does this “analog” have to be?
• What degree of fidelity is required in
representing the sound pressure waves
coming out of the speaker’s throat?
• How faithful do the sound pressure waves
reproduced at the far end have to be?
• What is speech?
• Speech is a from of sound.
• Sound pressure waves coming out of the
speaker’s face vibrate rapidly, that is, go through
cycles of compression and rarefaction.
• If this vibration occurs between 20 and 20,000
cycles per second, the sound pressure waves are
said to be audible by the human ear.
Capacity Restrictions…
• The two choices in designing
the telephone system are then
to either:
• a) Reproduce sound pressure
waves coming out of the speaker
in the far-end telephone exactly as
they entered the microphone in
the near-end telephone; or
• b) Reproduce the sensations in the
listener’s brain the same as they
would experience were they
speaking directly to the other
person.
Capacity Restrictions…
• The Voiceband
• What answer did Alexander
Graham Bell choose?
• Answer (b). Based on testing
human beings’ ears, throats
and brains, led us to transmit
the information in the
frequency range between 300
and 3400 Hz. The range or
band of frequencies from 300
to 3400 Hz is called the
voiceband.
Capacity Restrictions…
• Bandwidth • The IEEE defines a voice-
• For our purposes, bandwidth band channel as “a
means capacity.
channel that is suitable for
• In the analog world, capacity is
measured literally by the width of transmission of speech or
the frequency band supported on analog data and has the
the physical medium by the maximum usable
service you are paying for.
• For the voiceband, the bandwidth
frequency range of 300 to
is the interval between 3400 and 3400 Hz”.
300 Hz, which is 3100 Hz or 3.1
• The ITU-T definition has the
kHz for short.
same range.
Capacity Restrictions…
• Why Does the Voiceband Stop at 3400 Hz?
• It would be technically possible to provide a greater bandwidth for
telephone service, resulting in crisper, clearer sound.
• The two wires that make up the loop are capable of supporting electricity
vibrating more often than 3400 times per second – in fact, DSL technologies
require electricity vibrating at frequencies measured in the millions of times
per second.
• The users’ ears and brains are capable of detecting sound pressure waves
vibrating more often than 3300 times per second – the human hearing
range extend up to 20,000 Hz.
• The answer is, as usual, money. This narrow frequency band was chosen
based on studying people’s ears, throats and brains, to determine the
minimum capacity necessary to meet the requirements.
Capacity Restrictions…
• Problem with Voiceband
Restrictions
• Not quite enough bandwidth to be
able to understand everything the
speaker is saying!
• Difficult to tell the difference between
“S” and “F” over a telephone. This is
because the frequency of sound
pressure wave that distinguishes “S”
from “F” is above 3400 Hz
• Phonetic alphabets use words to
communicate each letter, for
example, “S as in Sierra” and “F as in
Foxtrot”
Capacity Restrictions…
• Attenuation and Amplifiers
• Aside from bandwidth restrictions, the
chief impediments to transmission over
analog circuits are noise and attenuation,
both of which affect the capacity of the
circuit to transport information.
• Attenuation on wired circuits is caused by
the physical characteristics of the copper
wires. Since copper is not a perfect
conductor, and has some resistance, some
of the transmitted energy is turned into
heat and the signal level decreases or
attenuates with distance from the
transmitter.
• On wireless systems, attenuation happens
due to the spreading effect of the waves.
V. Problems with Analog
Transmission
• EMI • Crosstalk
• Noise comes in many forms. On copper- • Crosstalk is a specific type of EMI,
wire access circuits, the most problematic
the transference of energy from one
is caused by radio waves, or more
precisely, Electro-Magnetic Interference wire to another via electro-magnetic
(EMI) Copper wires act like antennas. radiation. Usually, this happens
When a radio wave impinges on a wire, it when two circuits are in the same
induces electricity that adds to the cable: a signal placed on one circuit
desirable signal being carried on the wire. will create a magnetic field that
• The source of such interfering additive passes through the other circuit and
noise includes television broadcasts,
induces current on it. This is why
microwave ovens, computer chips, cellular
radio base stations, wireless LANs and you can hear other people talking
other sources. Interestingly, glass – fiber on your regular wired telephone
optics – does not act like an antenna and sometimes. The annoyance factor
does not pick up this kind of interference. decreases with comprehensibility.
Problems with Analog
Transmission…
• Impulse Noise
• Impulse noise appears like spikes of voltage on a circuit. This is
caused by lightning striking the wires, by the spark that jumps across
the contacts of a switch just before it closes, and when the brushes
on an electric motor pass the unpowered portion of its armature.
• In days past, this could be seen as white dots on a television screen
when a drill or vacuum cleaner is operated in close proximity. Impulse
noise is not additive noise – it hard-limits the signal to maximum, and
causes a burst of errors to happen. The most popular way to deal
with impulse noise is to format data into frames with error detection,
and re-transmit a frame if there was a spike on the line that caused a
burst of errors to happen.
VI.Plain Old Telephone Service
• Basic telephone service is
called POTS: Plain Old or
Ordinary Telephone
Service in the business,
and sometimes referred to
as dial tone or individual
residence line service. As
illustrated in the figure,
this service consists of a
rotary dial telephone
connected to a line card in
Plain Old Telephone Service…
• Tip and Ring
• The two wires that make up the
loop are sometimes referred to as
tip and ring. The connectors on
the patch cord were designed so
that one of the wires was
attached to the metal tip of a
male connector and the other
wire was attached to a metal ring
below the tip. Plugging the
connector into the jack connected
the two wires that made up the
loop at the same time.
Plain Old Telephone Service…
• Twisted Pair
• A problem with using two-wire circuits is that they act like antennas. Loop
antennas. The amount of energy picked up by a loop antenna is
proportional to its area… and here, we are connecting a 3 mi. / 5 km
diameter loop to the telephone (!).
• To minimize the amount of noise picked up on the wires, they are covered in
plastic, then twisted together. Since there is plastic on the wires, they still
act electrically like one big current loop, but from an antenna point of view
they appear as a series of small loops. The small loops have a smaller area
than the big loop, and so this minimizes the antenna effect of the wires.
Since there are two wires twisted together, we call them twisted pair.
Twisted pair is used for mostly all cabling, including telephone wires on
poles, inside wiring and data cabling – LAN cables have four twisted pairs.
Plain Old Telephone Service…
• Line Card
• The twisted-pair loop is terminated on
the network side on a line card,, a
small fiberglass board with a number
of components, integrated circuits and
connectors. In newer applications, the
line card might be part of a gateway
that converts between POTS and Voice
over IP.
• The line card implements a number of
functions, referred to by the acronym
BORSCHT: battery, overvoltage
protection, ringing, supervision,
codec, hybrid and testing.
Plain Old Telephone Service…
• Microphone and Speaker
• The microphone is a kind of transducer, creating a voltage based on
sound pressure waves. The value of this voltage is a representation
or analog of the strength of the sound pressure waves coming out of
the speaker’s throat.
• The voltage is carried from the telephone over the loop to the line
card at the near end, where it is digitized by the codec and
transported by the telephone network to be reproduced by the far-
end line card and carried by the far-end loop to the far-end telephone.
• The speaker, as might be imagined, works in a manner opposite to
the microphone: it uses received voltage to create sound pressure
waves that are directed into the user’s ear.
Plain Old Telephone Service…
• Balanced Signaling
• Voltage is always measured as a difference between the voltage on one
object and the voltage on another. In many cases, one object is the earth
and the other is a wire, so the voltage measurement is with respect to
the ground. This is not the case with a telephone loop.
• On a telephone loop, the voltage is measured between the two wires that
are the loop, not between the earth and the wires. Balanced signaling is
used. This means that if the voltage on one wire with respect to ground
is some positive value, the voltage on the other wire with respect to
ground will be the same value, but negative. Since added noise will be
the same on the two wires, when measuring the voltage between the
two wires at the receiver, the signal is doubled and the noise is canceled.
Plain Old Telephone Service…
• Two-way Simultaneous • Hybrid Transformer
• The two wires that are the • The voltage for each direction is
loop are used to transmit separated by a device inside the
telephone called the hybrid,
information in both directions
which has the two-wire loop on
at the same time. Both the
one side and two circuits on the
telephone and the line card other side, one for the speaker
cause voltage analogs of and the other for the
sound to be placed across microphone. A similar function is
the two wires of the loop. The implemented on the line card,
voltages from the devices at connecting the loop to the
each end are added together. transmit and receive pins of the
codec.
Plain Old Telephone Service…
• Battery • Lightning Protection
• There is a protection circuit across the
• Battery In addition to the voltage
loop. This is to protect the telephone
analog of sound, which might be user from being electrocuted, if lightning
thought of as an AC (or varying) hits the loop or a high-voltage electrical
signal, the line card also places a transmission wire touches the loop.
DC (or steady) voltage across • There are three levels of protection: a
the two wires that make up the fuse on the line card, circuitry on the
demarcation point where the telephone
loop. This voltage is called company’s wires connect to the
battery in the business, and is customer’s wires that will fall to ground
used to power the telephone. It if the voltage is too high, and third,
is nominally -48 volts, measured inside the telephone a circuit that will
from ring to tip. short-circuit the loop if the voltage
across the loop is too high.
Plain Old Telephone Service…
• Supervision
• Two other components of the telephone, the hook switch and ringer,
are used for supervision. Supervision means you must indicate to
the other end of your loop that you want to start speaking.
• The hook switch in the telephone is normally open. To initiate
communications, the user picks up the handset (goes off-hook),
which causes the hook switch to close, connecting the two wires
together, which then allows the line voltage to push current around
in a… loop. This type of supervision is called loop start signaling: the
two wires are connected, forming a loop and allows current to flow in
a loop. The line card on the telephone switch detects this current
and acknowledges with a dial tone.
Plain Old Telephone Service…
• Supervision…
• There are variations on this theme used in other applications such as PBX switches,
such as ground start signaling, where one of the wires is plugged into the ground, so
the current flows along one wire then back through the ground; reverse battery
signaling where the positive and negative line voltage is reversed; and wink start
signaling where that is done for a short interval then returned to normal value.
• For supervision in the other direction, the switch indicates it wants to initiate
communications by having the line card place a ringing signal on the loop. This is yet
another voltage, one that varies 20 times per second. It is applied to the line for two
seconds then not for four seconds in a repeating cycle. When your phone rings, it is
on-hook. This means that the hook-switch is open, so the current pushed by this
ringing signal flows through the ringer. The user acknowledges by going off-hook.
• The line voltages are nominally as follows: On Hook: -48 Volts DC • Ringing: -48
Volts DC, plus 100 Volts RMS @ 20 Hz • Off-Hook: -7 to -12 Volts DC.
Plain Old Telephone Service…
• Call Progress Tones
• Dial tone is a type of call progress
tone.
• There are many others, such as
busy, fast busy signals, ringback,
congestion, sounder and howler
tones.
• These are generated by the switch
to inform the user of different
conditions. Some of the call
progress tones, such as dial tone
and fast busy are generated by the
near-end switch. Busy signals are
generated by the far-end switch.
VII.Signaling
• The IEEE defines signaling as • With telephony, signaling is
the exchange of information broken down in three
specifically concerned with functional areas:
the establishment and control • 1. Supervisory
of connections and the • 2. Address
transfer of user-to-user and • 3. Call progress: Audible-visual
management information in a
• Another signaling breakdown
telecommunication network.
is
• Signaling is used is used to • A. Subscriber signaling
set up, maintain , and • B.Interregister/Interswitch
disconnect calls. signaling
Signaling…
Signaling…
Network
Addresses/Telephone
Numbers
• Dialing Plan • The user had to dial anywhere from five to
• The length and assignment of the telephone ten of these digits, sometimes prefaced with
number is called a numbering plan or dialing a 1 to indicate the desired destination. All of
plan. In days past, the North American this has changed with the introduction of
Numbering Plan for telephone numbers was of computer-based switches, and the need for
the form NBN-NNX-XXXX, where more network addresses: the last area code
• N is any number from 2 – 9 under this plan was assigned in the 1990s!
• B is any number from 0 – 1 • Today, telephone numbers can be of the form
• X is any number, and NXX-NXX-XXXX, and the “area code” no
longer necessarily corresponds to a unique
• The first three digits were the area code, geographic area nor necessarily means long
• The next two were the CO code, distance charges will apply.. The physical
• The next one identified the switch in that CO, destination corresponding to any particular
• The last four identified the physical pair of address is now stored in a database in a
wires. computer.
Signaling…
• Address Signaling
• The last main aspect of POTS is
address signaling, and in particular,
how the network address of the called
party is indicated or signaled from the
calling party’s telephone to the CO
switch.
• The first kind of CO switch was a
person using a switchboard and patch
cords to connect loops and trunks. In
this case, the mechanism for the caller
to signal the network address of the
called party was for the caller to use
their voice and identify the desired
called party by name. 
Signaling…
• Pulse Dialing
• To signal numerical addresses from the
telephone to the switch, a rotary dial was
added to the telephone.
• Opening the dial switch would
momentarily interrupt the flow of
electricity on the loop, then closing the
dial switch would allow the resumption of
the current, then interrupted, then
resumed, and so on.
• From the line card point of view, this would
appear as pulses of electrons coming
down the loop; viewed on a voltmeter, it
would appear as square pulses of voltage,
and so this signaling technique is called
pulse dialing.
Signaling…
• DTMF. The improvement on pulse dialing was
called Touch Tone. Touch-tone is actually a
registered trademark of AT&T. The generic
name for this type of signaling is Dual Tone
Multiple Frequency or DTMF signaling. This is
an address signaling mechanism that uses
combinations of tones.

• DTMF signaling is faster than pulse dialing,

as the button must be depressed for a
minimum of 50 ms and the inter-digit
interval is 50 ms – for all buttons. A zero
requires 100 ms (0.1 sec) to signal using this
method, compared to 1.7 seconds using dial
pulsing.
Signaling…
• In-band Signaling • Hidden Buttons , Caller ID
• Another advantage of DTMF is that it
• Though a standard telephone
is an in-band signaling mechanism. All
of the tones are within the voiceband: keypad has 12 buttons, there
300 - 3400 Hz. The capability put in are actually 16 buttons
place for voice communication is also defined for DTMF. The
being used to signal control
“hidden” four buttons are
information, using tones within the
frequency band used for voice. This labeled A – D and share the
allows the re-use of DTMF signaling high group frequency 1633
end-to-end between customer Hz. These tones are used only
premise equipment after the call is
for very special signaling
completed: for example, from a
telephone to a voice mail system. situations, like Call Waiting
with Caller ID.
VIII. Signaling System 7
• Once the caller has signaled the desired called party’s address
from the telephone to the near-end switch, the next two functions
are routing the phone call and signaling the called number to the
far-end switch.
• In the old days, this was done using Multifrequency (MF) tones
similar to DTMF on the trunk circuits. The problem with that was
again speed, especially considering that there are multiple
switches between the near-end switch and the far-end switch.
• Today, a control system called Signaling System 7 (SS7), also
known as Common Channel Signaling System Number 7 (CCS7 or
C7) is used to do this address signaling function.
Signaling System 7…
• SS7 is a global standard
defined by the
International
Telecommunication Union
(ITU) Telecommunication
Standardization Sector
(ITU-T). It defines the
protocols by which
network elements
exchange information for
call setup, routing and
Signaling System
7…
The original concept behind SS7 was
to separate the actual calls on the
public telephone network from the
process of setting up and tearing
down those calls as a way to make
the network more efficient.
Signaling System 7…
• Out-of-band Signaling
• With SS7, signaling is out of band, that is, using digital coded messages on
separate data channels, not using tones on the voice communication channels.
• In practice, SS7 is centralized computers and databases (Service Control Points,
SCPs) connected via the Message Transfer Part (MTP), which is data circuits and
packet switches called Signal Transfer Points (STPs), to telephone switches
(Service Switching Points, SSPs).
• SS7 implements an infrastructure and standard protocols for the exchange of
control messages or signaling between control computers and switches. The set
of call control messages is called the ISDN User Part (ISUP). A company’s SS7
system will exchange ISUP messages with their switches, with other companies’
SS7 systems, and with customers’ control systems. Messages to and from
customer systems are usually communicated over an ISDN Primary Rate
Interface (PRI) signaling channel.
Signaling System 7…
• Advanced Intelligent Network • Switch-based Call Routing
• In a perfect world, called the Advanced
Intelligent Network (AIN), all telephone call
• Due to this failure mechanism, in
routing decisions would be made by the practice, most telephone
centralized computers, the Service Control companies use a call routing
Points, and not the switches. This has large computer program from a supplier
advantages for the network service
provider, since it allows the rollout of like Alcatel-Lucent to update CO
features on the one or two sets of switch-based routing tables every
centralized computers, rather than on the ten seconds or so. The switch
hundreds of CO switches. However, having uses this table to determine the
the SCPs perform all call routing introduces
a single point of failure into the telephone call routing, rather than a table in
system… proved during a nine-hour the SCP. This allows the continued
complete failure of the telephone system on functioning of the network if the
the East Coast of the United States some call routing computer crashes.
years ago.
Signaling System 7…
• SS7 in Practice
• SS7 is in practice used by big telephone companies for call setup
signaling, to support database inquiries, and for high-end call routing
features. Call setup signaling is indicating the called number to the
far-end switch, and possibly the calling number for caller ID purposes.
• SS7 is also used for call setup between different carriers, for example,
communicating the calling number and called number from the local
phone company’s system to a wireless carrier when a call is placed
from a home phone to a cell phone.
• An example of a database inquiry message is credit authorization for
billing phone calls, such as when you use your telephone company
calling card from a payphone, or roam with your cellphone.
Signaling System 7…
• Residential Service Application Example
• High-end value-added call routing features are sometimes called AIN
services. An example for residential service is call forwarding. When you
press *72 on your phone and hear four beeps, this indicates that you are
now communicating with the SCP, perhaps indirectly. When you enter the
number you want your phone forwarded to, an entry is made in a
database, and a trigger is placed on your line card. The trigger is in fact a
bit set in a status register associated with your line card in the computer
called the telephone switch. When a call is to be routed to that number
using the basic switch-based routing, the fact that the trigger on the line
card is set causes the far-end CO switch to not terminate the call on that
line card, but instead to do a query on the SCP to get the routing
information – which will be to the number you forwarded your phone to.
Signaling System 7…
• Business Service Application Example
• For businesses, examples include both basic 800 service and sophisticated call routing
services that change where an 800 number is terminated based on time of day,
geographic location of the caller or the call volume. An example of the latter is an airline
that has two call centers in different parts of the country, for example, one in Utah and
one in Georgia. There is a single 800 number 1-800-AIRLINE for that airline that is valid
everywhere in North America. By default, calls are routed based on geographic location
of the caller; callers in the West are routed to the call center in Utah, and callers in the
East go to Georgia. However, the airline pays their Inter-Exchange Carrier for a service
that allows them to do load balancing: if for example the call center in Utah becomes
busy and the call center in Georgia is not, the airline can signal the network to route
phone calls to Georgia, regardless of where the caller is geographically located… and
then signal the network to change the routing back to normal a minute later. This idea is
sometimes referred to as “customer control of the network”, perhaps more accurately
“real-time customer control of their call routing”. It is a sophisticated service enabled by
SS7.
IX. Voice over IP
Reference Images
Telecommunications
Network Defined Switching Types
Switching before 1984 Switching after 1984
Manual Switching Manual Switching
Outside Plant (OSP) OSP
Main Distribution Frame MDF
MDF Cable Vault
Subscriber Loop / Local loop
Battery Feed Circuit Lucent 5ESS Switch
Subscriber Loop Design
Loss and Resistance Table
for Subscriber Loop Design Line Card (SLIC)
Digital Loop Carrier (SLC-96) Bridged Tap
Multi-Service Access