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No, a lot of AT&T buildings were built as bunkers, well blockhouses, during the Cold War. The typical "reinforced" criteria was being able to handle 2-3psi over
by giantrobot 6y ago
No, a lot of AT&T buildings were built as bunkers, well blockhouses, during the Cold War. The typical "reinforced" criteria was being able to handle 2-3psi over pressure and storm force winds (70mph).
This particular building is an old AT&T-cum-BellSouth-cum-AT&T tandem office. It's where end offices (that connected to actual customer phones) would be connected together and connected to inter exchange carriers.
AFAIK AT&T tended to build their tandem offices as reinforced style buildings. They are larger than end offices and needed high availability because they were the central node for a region's telephone network and its connection to other networks.
I don't think I've ever seen any central office in a regular home in a neighborhood. Even end offices, while smaller than tandems, required a lot of equipment and power backups. Besides the equipment in the building they'd usually have secured parking/storage for service vehicles.
- function_seven 6y ago"Central Office" is the wrong term for it, but I've worked in a couple switching offices that were built to look just like another house in the tract. They were RSUs (Remote Switch Unit), that trunked everything back to a parent CO. In both cases it was a housing tract that was allergic to ugly buildings or something. The vast majority of RSUs looked like smaller versions of the CO. Gray cinder blocks and asphalt.
- giantrobot 6y agoThat's interesting, I've only ever seen cross boxes (ugly green boxes) with RCUs in them. Then again I may have seen tons of disguised RSUs and never have known it.