Mapquest and CO (telco central office) locations

Thu Nov 20 12:54:54 PST 2003

Quoting Jim Hickstein (jxh at jxh.com):
> >Is anyone else able to confirm that -- about this, anyway -- I was,
> >in fact, not hallucinating?  And does anyone know either how to
> >recover this capability or know that it was removed for some
> >set of reasons?
> 
> I would be surprised if you were _not_ hallucinating, as wire-center 
> boundaries are considered highly confidential, and even the locations of 
> the central offices themselves (though quite obvious when you drive by one) 
> are not supposed to be widely known.

I got this line from the phone lady when I was trying to find out
how far my CO actually was.  "It's highly confidential information."
Actually, I was trying to learn WHICH CO we attached to.

Its public record.  You can find it at the library.  I had the
convenience that my GirlF worked at an ISP in SF and they had
a map.  With details.

So my next line to PacBell Lady was roughly, "look I want to know
if I'm hitting the 5ESS at 40th and Telegraph, CO designation
BlahBlah Blah or if I'm going to this other one here, CO blahblahblah."

"Um, your on the first one.  How did you get that info?!"

The library?  City Hall?  Several other places of public record?

It's the BellCore mindset where they put huge proprietary value on
public records.  (See also Fiber Optic and the Adventure of the
911 Information).

I tire of companies using 9/11 as an excuse to hold information 
as proprietary.  We are a free and open society.  Our country
was not created to meet the ends of the merchant class - from
PacBell to Wallmart.  They incidentally benefit from it.  Attacks
on our culture succeed when we stop being that culture.