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For the last few years BT (now openreach) has been announcing the withdrawal of the Meter Pulse Facility. This will now be completed fully by 1st September 2008.
This is now taking place as can be evidenced by their Customer briefing WLR0870/70 dated 23/08/2007 and previously advised by WLR058/06, WLR096/06 and WLR063/07).
The stated reason is due to incompatibility with the 21st Century Network (21CN)
The Meter Pulse facility is a Call Answer and Call Costing signalling system that is used and other hospitality sector customers. It was only available on analogue trunk lines. When a call was made on an analogue line, a Meter Pulse was sent from the far receiving exchange to indicate the call was answered. This is called answer supervision.
Subsequent Meter Pulses were then sent to indicate the cost of the call. A local call would receive Meter pulses every few minutes, whereas a long distance call would receive pulses every few seconds. Each Meter Pulse had a price associated with it. The more pulses a call attracted, the more it cost.
In the absence of meter pulses, Hotel and other hospitality industry telephone systems such as PBX, Call Loggers and Hotel Front Office Computer will no longer be able to cost calls at all. This obviously creates a serious problem.
Cubix has a complete solution, the MP-07, a system that calculates how many meter pulses a call would have had (or costed) and restituting the missing Meter Pulse count and sending it to the Call Logging or
computer equipment calculating the cost of calls before charging them to customers. The Cubix MP-07 is a complete ready to work solution. It does not need any modification to the telephone system, the BT lines of the call charging Hotel Front Office computer of Call Logger.
All necessary configurations and cabling is supplied, installation and system verification can be accomplished in under one hour.
The BT plan consists of 4 phases leading to a full withdrawal of Meter Pulse Facility.
The following table summarises the dates, the number of exchanges.
| PHASE | WITHDRAWAL DATE |
NUMBER OF EXCHANGES |
CONFIRMATION BRIEF ISSUE DATE |
| Pathfinder migration | 30/03/2007 | 9 | Completed |
| Phase 1 | 01/11/2007 | 129 | July 2007 |
| Phase 2 | 01/03/2008 | 231 | 01/09/07 |
| Phase 3 | 01/09/2008 | 304 | 01/03/2008 |
This briefing should be consulted for listing of exchanges associated with each phase.
https://www.openreach.co.uk/orpg/news/productbriefings/wlr/wlr07007.do
The only BT alternative solution to work without Meter Pulses is the Called Party Answer.
This provides only a signal to indicate the call was answered, No indication of the total number of Pulses is given.
Please note the rental of the Call Party Answer Facility will be subject to charges as set out in the Openreach Price list.
As of today, Cubix is the only supplier that has a complete solution. The MP-07 is accurate, easy to install, has built in diagnostics.
It is available from your telecoms dealer. To download our technical paper please follow this link.
For your nearest dealer, contact CUBIX
