North American
Telephone Signaling System Technologies
Past & Present

Telephone Signaling System Technologies

A brief overview of the history and operation of telephone signaling technologies.

Pulses

Pulses (interrupting current on toll trunk lines), especially on inter-office trunk lines, were common in the days of step by step and crossbar systems. These were used to pulse out dialed digits, either directly or via pulse senders from a central office switch, to the destination switch. Though not in common use today, these may still do exist in rare instances outside of North America.

DC Voltage and DC Polarity

Voltage changes and polarity changes (as well as pulses) were used in some inter-office signaling routines. These were sometimes found in Panel systems when communicating to Panel "tandem" systems. Never was in common use and are not used anymore.

Multi-Frequency Signaling

MF (Multi-Frequency) signaling was developed in the 1930's for signaling between central office and toll tandem systems. Special dual frequency tones (not the same as Touch Tones) are used to send information of the called telephone number throughout the network. These tones have to be within the band of normal voice communications in the telephone system (300Hz to 3000Hz). The information is sent to either tandems and then to local central offices, or from central office to other central offices directly. The format of a typical MF sequence on most calls is:

KP+dialed digits+ST

where KP = Key Pulse and ST = Start. Most MF toll trunks in the US and Canada use 2600 Hz as supervision and for idle line. Some places used 3750 Hz (out of band) for supervision/idle line control.

An abbreviated listing of MF tones in the North American network (sometimes referred to as R1 signaling) are shown in the chart below. KP2 is not normally used in domestic traffic.

MF signaling is still used in limited amounts in the US and Canada, though it is not used as much in most toll systems as it had been in the past. An international version of MF signaling (sometimes referred to as R2 for bi-directional signaling) is still in widespread use throughout the world.

Common Channel Inter-Office Signaling / Signaling System 7

CCIS (Common Channel Inter-Office Signaling) started in the late 1970s as a way to send more information between tandems and switches in the network. Sending a call via MF takes up to 15 seconds on a domestic phone call. Also, MF lead itself to toll fraud since making MF tones is fairly easy to do.

CCIS was invented to send information "out of band" on a data circuit parallel to the voice circuit. This way the call can be set up and completed in a shorter amount of time, be able to send more information, and avoid toll fraud - all at the same time.

The early commonly deployed version of CCIS was version 6. The modern version of CCIS is version 7 - commonly called SS7 (Signaling System 7) where there are 7 "layers" of the signaling network. SS7 is in widespread use in the USA, Canada and many industrialized countries in the world including the UK, Australia and others.

Other Telephone Network Systems Pages

Telephone Switching Systems - Main Page
Modern Local Central Office Switching Systems
Vintage Local Central Office Switching Systems
Telephone Network Signaling Technology
Telephone Network Transmission Technology
Telephone Tandem Systems
Old (Historic) Number 4 Crossbar (#4XB) List

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Page last modified December 20, 2008
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