Lucent 7 R/E 5ESS Telephone Switch Rescue

Summary

I am still recovering from the fairly challenging logistical project of saving a Lucent 5ESS. This is a whale of a project and I am still in a state of disbelief that I have gotten to this point. Thanks to my wife, brother, and a few friends for their help and the University of Arizona which has a very dedicated and professional Information Technology Services staff. It started when I saw some telephone history enthusiasts post about a construction bid at the University of Arizona. It turns out, U of A installed the 5ESS in the late 1980s in a rather forward thinking move that netted a phone system that handled the growth of the University, medium speed data anywhere a phone may be located (ISDN BRI or PRI), and copper and fiber plant that will continue to be used indefinitely. At peak, it served over 20,000 lines. They've done their own writeup, The End of An Era in Telecommunications, that is worth a read. In particular, the machine had an uptime of approximately 35 years including two significant retrofits to newer technology culminating in the current Lucent-dressed 7 R/E configuration that includes an optical packet-switched core called the Communications Module 3 (CM3) or Global Messaging Server 3 (GMS3). Moving 40 frames of equipment, this required a ton of planning and muscle. The whole package took up two 26' straight-trucks, which is just 1' short of an entire standard US semi-trailer. Coming from the computing and data networking world, the construction of the switch was quite bewildering at first. It is physically made up of standard frames which are interconnected into rows not unlike datacenter equipment, but the frames are integrated into an overhead system for cable management. Internally, they are wired up usually within the row and quite a few cables route horizontally beween frames, but some connections have to transit up and over to other rows. Line Trunk Peripherals hook up to a Switching Module Controller (SMC) directly or an OXU (Optical Cross...