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?

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?