That kind of fraud was relatively rare here due to the lack of MF trunk signaling systems. The trunk system went from 1930s style to fiber optic in one jump. From the early 1980s all of the trunk & international switches went fully digital.
The few remaining local electromechanical switches were not very interesting to phreakers as there was no way of getting around their digital parents.
Making local calls for free was pretty much pointless as until 1993 Eircom charged a flat 11pence for a local call regardless of length. However, with the arrival of the internet and the dial-up modem they suddenly started charging. At the peak of dial-up internet modem traffic was representing up to 80% of all local call mins in some areas!
I was talking with a retired former Telecom worker who actually knew the full history of switching here:
1932-1962 Strowger equipment was being purchased and installed as new.
1954 - Ericsson crossbars began to appear in the system.
1962 - Policy was implemented to phase out Strowger gear and all new equipment was crossbar.
By 1972 at least 75-80% of automatic equipment was common control crossbar.
1978ish : RJ11 modular plugs began to replace hardwire & old style plugs (headphone jack like)
1978ish - Discussion about going fully digital
1979 - Trials of an Irish version of the French CIT/Alcatel E10B switch began. Within a short time the advantages were clear, low/no maintenence, easy to install & flexible (compared to crossbar), small size and very suitable for use in small rural locations as well as urban areas. By the early 1980s the Government had made it a matter of urgent policy to fully digitalise as a matter and pumped money in.
1980/81 - First E10 units went into public service.
slightly later Ericsson AXE switches began to appear.
Many of these went into local service in areas that were still manually switched i.e. rural areas at first.. any remaining step-by-step areas next and then crossbars began to be phased out starting with the oldest ones & any serving core-business areas i.e. city centres / industrial estates / business parks etc.
Crossbar systems installed in the mid-late 70s happily served residental areas as local switches providing very high quality service right up to the early 1990s.
1984: P&T split in 2 and replaced by an independent semistate company "Telecom Eireann" and a seperate post office "An Post"
1985 - Eircell, a TE subsiduary, launched a TACS mobile service using Motorola transmission and ericsson AXE switching.
Around the same time Minitel Ireland (joint venture between TE and France Telecom) appeared but, partly due to poor marketing and lack of any interesting services other than online banking, had very few users compared with French minitel.The service was pretty much dead and burried by the mid-90s although still exsists for some specialised closed-network uses.
1987-88 Smart card payphones appeared following trials of various magnetic and optical alternatives.
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Limited STD dialling exsisted back as far as it did in the UK but full STD didn't appear until the 1970s and then only in automatic areas so many rural areas were excluded until they went digital. 100% automatic service was later than the UK, but near full digitalisation was MUCH earlier.
IDD (International Direct Dialling) appeared in Crossbar areas in the mid 1970s to 20 countries via 16 + country code. Strowger switches were limited to STD and some calls to the UK.
Full IDD was available from day 1 in all digital areas
via 16 + country code
PhonePlus, later renamed Call Management services also launched around 1980 on the E10 switches & the AXE systems which followed later.
*Call diversion *21*+ no + # (conditional divertion [busy, no answer, offhook etc] came a few years later)
*Call waiting *43# (R2 to toggle between calls, R3 for three-way call, R1 to dump current call and go to next)
*Threeway calling
*Hotline, where you could programme a number with a code (not sure what it was now!) and once your reciever was off hook for 10 seconds it called automatically.
*Abreviated dialling where you programmed using *41*X*number# and could then dial by using a short code +#
*Alarm call *55*Time#
An automated charge card service also debued in the mid 80s.
*** more came later Voicemail & "Never busy fax", Caller ID, call return, etc.
Here's the inside of a very boring looking eircsson AXE 10 installed in the 1980s. The older gear looked more interesting.
[This message has been edited by djk (edited 09-17-2003).]