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52nd
Signal Battalion |
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| Battalion History | |||||||||
| 1974 - 1998 | |||||||||
| (Source: 52nd Signal Battalion web site, www.52sig.stuttgart.army.mil - now a dead link) | |||||||||
52nd Signal
Battalion DUIThe 52d Signal Battalion was constituted 18 October 1927 in the Regular Army and later activated on 10 February 1941 at Fort Sam Houston, TX. On 2 February 1942, the battalion arrived in Australia, and subsequently worked its way through Dutch New Guinea, and eventually the Philippines before the end of the war. The battalion participated in a total of four campaigns during the war to include Dutch New Guinea, Leyte, Luzon, and the southern Philippines. It was during these campaigns that the battalion received the honor of being known as "MacAuthur's Own" The battalion completed its valiant service in the South Pacific and was inactivated in Korea on 25 January 1949. On 15 October 1966, the battalion was reactivated in Can Tho, Republic of Vietnam, at Fort Lewis, and assumed operational control of all area communications facilities in support of IV Corps, US MACV Advisory Teams. Over the next four years, the 52d Signal Battalion would participate in twelve separate campaigns throughout the Republic of Vietnam. In the fall of 1971, the battalion began to stand down and was subsequently inactivated at Fort Lewis, Washington on 12 October 1971. On 1 July 1974, less than three years later, the battalion was again activated at its present home at Patch Barracks, Vaihingen, Germany. The battalion consisted of Heaquarters and Headquarters Company, the 578th Signal Company, and the 589th Signal Company. The SOCEUR Signal Detachment (SSD) was formed, and joined the battalion, at the direction of the USCINCEUR in July 1984, to provide wartime communications support for Special Operations Command Europe (SOCEUR) and peacetime contingency/crisis communications. Since its creation, SSD has provided unique communciations support to SOCEUR including Operations Desert Shield/Desert Storm and Southern Watch, Provide Hope (Rwanda), Provide Promise/Deny Flight and Joint Endeavor (Bosnia); Noncombatant Evacuation Operations (NEO) in Liberia and Sierra Leone; VIP support to U. S. dignitaries throughout the European and African continents; and survey support as part of USEUCOM Survey and Assessment Teams. In 1986, the Information Mission Area and the United Kingdom Signal Company were added to the battalion. In 1989, the 298th Signal Company, located at Kelley Barracks, Moehringen, joined the 52d Signal Battalion. The conclusion of Operation Desert Storm ushered in a new era of reorganization for the battalion. In April 1991, the 52d Signal Battalion, minus the 587th Signal Company and the United Kingdom Signal Company, was transferred to the operational control of the 2d Signal Brigade. On 1 November 1991, many of the missions and functions of the 578th Signal Company, 589th Signal Company and the 298th Signal Company were combined with Headquarters and Headquarters Detachment, 52d Signal Battalion. On 17 June 1994, as a continuing part of reorganization, the 69th Signal Battalion's Augsburg Community Service Center was transferred to the 52nd Signal Battalion. The 52nd Signal Battalion was now responsible for the administration of all DOIM functions for Southern Bavaria. The battalion's last reorganization occurred on 29 June 1994, when the 587th Signal Battalion was realigned from the 302nd Signal Battalion and the 52nd Signal Battalion assumed all responsibilities for the soldiers assigned to the 587th Signal Company. |
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| If you have more information on the history or organization of the 52nd Signal Battalion, please contact me. | |||||||||
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| 587th Signal Company | |||||||||
| 1976 - 1998 | |||||||||
| (Source: 52nd Signal Battalion web site, www.52sig.stuttgart.army.mil - now a dead link) | |||||||||
| On 1 July 1976,
the 587th Signal Company was reactivated at its present location in
Stuttgart-Vaihingen, Germany, under the 52nd Signal Brigade. During the 5th Signal Command reorganization, the Company doubled in size, growing to a total of 337 soldiers and 20 communications sites spread throughout southern Germany. In 1991, the 587th Signal Comapny was placed under the 302nd Signal Battalion. On 14 June 1994, the 587th was again reassigned to the 52nd Signal Battalion, 2nd Signal Brigade. The Company's size was reduced to 235 soldiers and 9 communications sites. This included the newly acquired sites of Project 329 at Bad Aibling, the tech Control (facility) at Augsburg and the Automated Multi-Media Exchange of the 52nd Signal Battalion. |
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| 589th Signal Company | |||||||||
| 1977 | |||||||||
| (Source: EurArmy Magazine, Sept 1977) | |||||||||
| ISOLATED SITE by CPT Lynn Havach 0ne guy calls it the "land of the horizontal icicles." Another says it's the best location in the Army. A third says, "The whole place is gray. It's like living in a bottle of fog." Still another says it's a "bump-into-your-buddy-everywhere" site. The site these soldiers are referring to is a 5th Signal Command microwave relay station on top of the Feldberg, the highest mountain in the Black Forest. The station is in Germany's southwest corner, 36 kilometers north of Switzerland and 30 kilometers east of France. The unit designation reads like this: Feldberg/Schwarzwald Microwave Relay, 589th Signal Co, 52nd Signal Bn, 160th Signal Gp, 5th Signal Command. That designation is almost bigger than the unit itself. This Army study in isolation perches 4,758 feet above sea level and is home and office for two E-7s, one E-6, one E-5, six E-4s, one PFC and a pregnant cat who by now may have given birth and boosted the Feldberg population by 40 percent. Ferguson the cat, however, is the only full-time Feldberg female. Her male soldier friends live and work in a small, paint-peeled building and share the mountain's summit with a German weather station and television tower, a French Army microwave station and a Bundeswehr-operated NATO troposphere scanner site. Their two-floor home and office sits smack against a gray antenna with two large white dishes facing south and two facing north. The place isn't plush, but it has its good points:  A dining facility (run by the E-6) with a German and an Italian as cooks which recently was named the 5th Signal Command's best small dining facility; A $1,000-inventory PX, run by the site chief, that's open "whenever anyone needs to buy something and can find me," says Sergeant First Class Anthony E. Ciampa; A complete photo lab; A small gym with barbells, exercise bike and other sporting equipment; A game room with a stereo, pool table, dart board, fussball game and movie projector with boxes of feature-length movies nearby; A laundry room with washer and dryer; A club room with a small bar, stereo and television; A transient hill population that includes a few rabbits, deer, an ermine, sheep, thousands of ladybugs and frequent hikers and backpackers who peer in the windows thinking the place is a Gasthaus.But the place has its bad points, too. Karlsruhe, 125 miles away, is the nearest American military facility. It's here that the unit purchases its $1,100 worth of food each month. Stuttgart, home of its headquarters, is even farther away. The unit goes through a 1,000 liters of gasoline a month and 200 to 300 gallons of official fuel. The nearest doctor is a German civilian at the bottom of the hill and dental work has to be done at the Canadian Air Force Base in Lahr, 50 kilometers away. It snows on die Feldberg from September to April most years and high winds create 15-foot drifts and those "horizontal icicles." Sergeant First Class Samuel Glory says, "The weather's pretty good here -- seven months of snow and five months of late fall." Specialist 4 Thomas F. Pottorff, who arrived at Feldberg four days before Christmas two years ago, says last year they had snow on July 3rd, only 60 days of sunshine and one night when the weather station recorded 200-kilometer per hour winds. "It was clear the night I arrived here," Poltorff says, "stars and everything, then for two weeks I couldn't see anything." The "resident mountain man," Specialist 5 William A. Babst, knows about the Feldberg weather too. Billy, as he's called, has been there since November 1975, listening to "that wind whistle under my door," and seeing snow so deep the only way off the mountain was with one of the six treaded snowcats the guys got to by walking out the second-floor fire escape over crusted snow and ice. Mail comes twice a week, the chaplain once a month. Baked goods often flop before cooks discover correct stove adjustments to compensate for the altitude. And there're two kinds of female companionship -- not much and none. Glory and Staff Sergeant Leslie Barger, Jr., die mess sergeant, have wives in the States. But things are just about as hard for the bachelors. Specialist 4 Richard H. Stoll has to go all the way to Karlsruhe to visit his Gernan kindergarten teacher girlfriend. He thinks Feldberg is a nice place but says, "I miss my girlfriend." Experienced signal soldiers say the sameness of isolated communications sites is the worst part and Feldberg is no exception. If there's no rain, snow or fog to keep the site gray, there're always low-flying clouds. And the loneliness. Glory's 12 years at isolated sites lead him to say, "I've had a lot of exposure to isolation. It doesn't make it any easier but it helps when you know what to expect." Living with hardships other units rarely face is a day-in, day-out job at the Feldberg site. AFN-Stuttgart-FM comes in clear, but AM fades. The club room television receives German, French, Swiss and Italian shows, but no American ones. The site has one telephone, but it's German, not American military. The site's mission is communications, but the people there can't use the radios for ordinary traffic, only in emergencies. Shifts are long -- 12 hours. There really isn't much to do except listen to the droning equipment, the compressor sucking moisture from the lines, and wait for something to go wrong. Sergeant First Class Ciampa says, "We occasionally have a power failure in a storm, but nothing's happened in the last two months." The site maintains a stock of repair parts. There's also a complete backup system for each receiver and transmitter and a generator that restores power automatically and immediately when a failure occurs. The shift workers, all 26V MOSs (Strategic Microwave Systems Equipment Repairmen), perform routine maintenance and check dial readings. But basically, the site's equipment automatically relays USAREUR communications between Germany and Italy. Feldberg is the"pickle-in-the-middle" between Donnersberg, 120 miles to the north, and Savonna, Italy 243 miles over the Alps to the south. So in their spare time, the guys find other things to do. One erected a huge wall mural of the Neuschwanstein castle then pasted eight Playboy bunny symbols about the size of pin heads on it. New assignees often spend days looking for the rabbits. Some guys hike, volksmarch, jog and explore. A few even ski on their mountain, but they use their own equipment. The Army tried to help by sending the Feldberg unit ten sets of skis and poles, but unfortunately only included three pairs of boots (sizes 12½ and 13) and no bindings. The 5th Signal Command has the reputation as a stronghold of NCO professionalism, and the Feldberg site is a good example of what that fine-sounding phrase means. "You can call it NCO professionalism if you want," says SSG Barger. "But what it also means is putting the man with the knowhow in the job he's qualified for. "Let's face it. The job of site chief doesn't need someone we have to train. The logical choice from the officer ranks would probably be a lieutenant but he couldn't touch the experience of these sergeants who've been in the game 10, 12, maybe 14 years." NCO professionalism works so well at Feldberg, as a matter of fact, that it sounds easy, to hear SFC Glory tell it. "These guys are mature. We don't tell them to keep their rooms straight, or pull maintenance, or mop the floors. They do it because they want to. They take PT on their own, too." Glory thinks maybe the smallness of the site has something to do with how well things work. He enjoys the person-to-person atmosphere at Feldberg as opposed to the ". . . sergeant-to-specialist tone I've seen elsewhere." This means it's not so difficult to get people to work. "When the truck pulls up, people come crawling out of their holes to get the job done." There are also few disciplinary problems at the site. The bulletin board's Article 15 slot is bare and has been for as long as people can remember. There are no problems with drugs and no one drinks excessively. Each soldier assigned to Feldberg has to serve six months there. They're forced to stay no longer, but most do because they like it. SP4 Mace calls Feldberg "about the best job in the Army. I'm staying two years. I love the contact with our NATO allies I couldn't get on a big base." SP4 Pottorff has his stereo, ". .. and that's my hobby," so he's staying. Specialist 4 Michael A. Robenson, the driver, says the place "... reminds me a little of Colorado where I come from." SP4 Stoll says, "It's a good place to save money." It can be a quiet place, too. There's no loud music playing constantly. The guys respect their buddies sleeping off a shift. The guys keep pretty much to themselves and get along well. "I don't have to play referee up here," says SFC Glory. "The only bad thing here," says SFC Ciampa, "is that one day is the same as any other. Frankly, I hate it here because I don't like snow and there're other places I'd rather be than Germany -- but I'm doing what has to he done." |
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| 1984 | |||||||||
| (Source: ECHO, May 1984) | |||||||||
| Snow-bound but satisfied Winter is a way of life at the Schwarzwald-Feldberg site by Lee Royal Like storybook waifs who leave a trail of bread crumbs to find their way home, a handful of soldiers from the 589th Sig. Co. must mark their way to work. In their case, they follow specially marked poles stuck in the snow every few feet -- guides that lead them to their signal site nestled in the Black Forest above the town of Feldberg. Like many mountain towns, Feldberg is in a recreation area visited for winter sports like skiing, sledding and hiking. But, for a few soldiers, it's home. The residents, workers and visitors begin the ride to the site from a Feldberg hotel. The 20-minute drive up the hill to the site can be rather tedious; the trip is made in a Snow Cat that reaches a top speed of six miles-per-hour. During the winter, the weather at the site can get pretty rough; the winds can reach 100 miles per hour. It's also quite a trick finding one's way up and down the hill in a snow storm. SSgt. Joseph Viveiros, site chef, says, "When you can't see very far ahead, you follow the poles, and when you can't see the poles you rely on instincts. We also have walkie-talkies so if someone gets lost we can find them." They aren't the only ones who follow the poles nearly two miles up the hill. The detachment shares the hill with French and NATO signal soldiers, Germans who run a weather station and TV tower, and German ski patrollers. Four civilians work at the 589th site as well.  If the other sites need supplies brought up the hill, the 589th soldiers make "runs" to help them out and the French and NATO sites once held an exercise on the hill and the 589th detachment helped transport a platoon of soldiers up the mountain, Viveiros says. Although the detachment's soldiers seem secluded in their mountain home, they do manage to socialize with the local residents. The French and German soldiers occasionally stop by for an evening, especially when the weather hampers a trip down the hill to town. The detachment also invites the local Burgermeister, the police chief, the German hotel employees and other soldiers from the 589th up to the site for get-togethers. "The Germans who work at the hotel are really nice and we've gotten to know them pretty well since we wait in their lobby for the Snow Cat. Sometimes they come by with coffee while we wait," says Sp4 James Mize, microwave repairman. Sometimes the site gets surprise visitors from the hotel. Most of the time they are lost or just looking for freshly snow-covered hills to traverse. Even though they enjoy occasional get-togethers with the locals, it can get pretty isolated during the long winters, but the soldiers do say there's never been a case of cabin fever. They credit that to the married soldiers because they occasionally bring their families up to the site for a change of pace. The soldiers who live at the site also think up projects to keep them busy. "We have films and mini-TV provided by AFN," Viveiros says. "We also have our own photo lab and weight room. Depending on the weather conditions, we go skiing a lot in our spare time. We try to think of things to occupy ourselves. We do all the small repairs here and even painted the training room in camouflage." When it comes to "getting out," however, things aren't so easy. "It looks like you've been through ten miles of bad weather by the time you get to a disco;" Viveiros says. "It takes about an hour to get there because you have to drive down the hill, hop in your car, and then drive another 40 to 45 minutes to the nearest town with a disco. "By the time you arrive you're sort of raggedy looking. But we try to get out to the disco once or twice a week to stay in form," he says with a laugh. Going out for a "night on the nearest town" isn't the only diffculty cause by their remoteness; the closest military community is three hours away. "It takes three hours to drive to the company headquarters and another couple of hours to take care of your business, and then three more hours driving back. That takes up the whole day," Viveiros says. "When we need to take care of our personal stuff, like going to finance or the dispensary, we have to wait until the next run. But we make runs twice a week - once to Stuttgart and once to Karlsruhe." It can be frustrating for the soldiers living outside a large military community. When they have problems, they can't be as readily resolved, but problems get taken care of with a little help from their friends at the site. Mize says they really care about each other. Since the isolation makes it different from most assignments, they pull closer together. "I've been here for three years and it's nice to go home to my wife after work," says Spy Gary Colley, maintenance chief. "It's nice to get away, but I start to think about the site when I'm off duty. "What did I do -- what didn't I do?' Many times I've gone back up when I was off duty." The soldiers who live at the site often feel like they're never off duty. Since they work and live at the same place they are often called upon to do a little extra, like shovel snow, just to get in and out of the building. Even the solders who live off-site pitch in and shovel snow however, and they also double as drivers for the Snow Cats and mechanics when they need repairs. "People have the wrong image of isolated sites," says Spy Anthony Tarquinio. "When most people think of a remote site they imagine a guy with long hair wearing civilian clothes. "When someone shows up at the bottom of the hill, whoever is off duty will go down and pick the visitor up," he explains. "Since the driver is off-duty, he will also be in civilian clothes." Tarquinio stresses that haircuts are gotten when needed, and that uniforms are worn for duty. He also says the detachment must be self-sufficient. "We do everything on our own. We have to be able to survive up here." When the signs of summer finally appear at the end of June, the detachment looks forward to barbeques and a little summer fun. For a while, they can even drive to the site in their cars. They know, however, that it's only a short respite from the cold, as the winter returns each year by mid-September. The Feldberg site soldiers spend so much time in winter conditions they often overlook some of the weather's more obvious effects. "The French needed some help bringing up some supplies one time, and I forgot to take my hat with me," Colley recalls. "On the way back the French soldiers kept looking at me and I couldn't figure out what they were staring at. I finally felt my face to see what was so fascinating. I had icicles hanging off my ear." |
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| (Source: Email from John W. Davis, CO, 589th Sig Co, 1986-87) | |||||||||
| I was the commanding officer of the 589th Sig Co from June 1986 – December 1987. I found my old overhead slide presentation that I used to give for the company responsibilities and loaded to my web site. Maybe you would like to take a look at it now as a PowerPoint presentation and include it on your web site about the 589th for others to see and remember. Most of the Kaserns we supported are gone now turned over to the Germans along with many of units deactivated. Here is the link to the presentation:  |
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| (Source: Heilbronn Eagle, April 25, 1988) | |||||||||
| Communications from the unknown By Stan Buhring Ask the average soldier on Wharton Barracks who is 589th? The responses vary from "I don't know" to "you tell me." If a person mentions telephones it helps. The telephone people, as 589th Sig. Co. is referred to, are a small detachment of twelve soldiers and five civilians. Annexed from their headquarters in Stuttgart, 589th provides telephone service and telecommunications support for the Heilbronn Military Community. This small group of soldiers and civilians work for the Directorate of Information Management (DOIM). "Communications is one of four areas controlled by DOIM. They are a small group of people who do their work very well," explained Billy Smith, DOIM Director. Most people recognize the telephone service because of its use. Telephone service is made up of two functions. The first and most common is operator assistance. Megan Smith, civilian operator for 589th says, "We mainly just give information such as ETS prefixes. We can place some calls to Heilbronn and the outlying areas. "We work 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. After 4 p.m., Stuttgart operators take over our switchboard." Telephone maintainance and installation is taken care of by the soldiers and two civilians. Sp.4 William B. Heyward III explains, "The work isn't hard but we have to pay close attention to detail in order to give the customers the service they asked for." The work ranges from checking the ringer to climbing poles and installing cable. Heyward continued, "The renovations have given us extra work transferring phones to different buildings. We have just a few people and we have to cover five sites." The five separate sites that are covered by telephone repair take up most of their time. "The hardest task is tracing a short in a line," Heyward continued. "Once you've installed the phone it's easy to work on because you know what you did to install it." The telecommunications support comes from the soldiers you hardly ever see. They work such hours as 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. or 10 p.m. to 6 p.m. They are rarely seen in uniform during normal duty hours. "Working night shift is nice because there is no one around. It's really quiet," Sp.4 Cindy Buhring explains. "The only drawback is sometimes the nightshift workers have to put in few extra hours during the day for common skills training." The telecommunications center (TCC) is manned 24 hours a day. There is always someone there if an emergency arises in the community and messages need to be sent. Recently going to a part-time operation, the TCC handles only "emergencies" after 5 p.m. "We work with a lot of classified information in here," explained Dan Peterson, one of two civilians in the TCC. "We have to pay very close attention to detail in our operations. We are very security conscions." The TCC has been highly successful in accomplishing their mission. Recently they received a Certificate of Achievement from their battalion for outstanding site operations and community support. "We have recently upgraded our system to include magnetic tapes," Peterson continued. "Magnetic tapes provide faster service with data traffic than data cards which were being used before." "We work very hard in supporting the Heilbronn community. We understand the fact that we are a very important part of this community's mission," said Sfc. Roy M. Leon Guerrero, TCC NCOIC. 589th also has a small detachment in Schwaebish Hall. "Schwaebisch Hall has the same mission there as we do here," said Sfc. Ronald Robeson, area chief for Heilbronn and Schwaebisch Hall. Though small in size, 589th Sig. Co. completes their mission just like the big boys. |
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| (Source: ECHO, October 1984) | |||||||||
| Letting
the Stuttgart military community reach out and touch ... By Eugene Hill (from the Stuttgart Citizen) Those who have been assigned to Germany for any period of time may recognize the ubiquitous term "Hitler's Revenge" as a mocking term used to describe the problems of the military phone system in Germany. Many of the problems that have helped create that phrase, such as disruption of phone service by bad weather or busy signals that seem to last for hours, can sometimes be attributed to some of the 1940-vintage equipment that the 5th Signal Command still operates. The wheels of progress continue to roll, however, and new phone equipment is being installed to replace the World War II relics. The command's representative in the Stuttgart area, the 52nd Signal Battalion, a part of the 160th Signal Brigade, has a mission that calls for more than just military telephone service. They are also relied on for area communication support and direct support to DCINCEUR, USEUCOM. The battalion's Headquarters Detachment, 587th and 578th Signal Companies are located at Patch Barracks in Vaihingen, near Stuttgart, and the 589th Signal Company is located at Robinson Barracks in Stuttgart itself. The battalion's 675 military and civilian personnel work around the clock to provide a vast assortment of communications media, including telecommunication, microwave and telephone services. The 52nd is one of three battalions in the 160th Signal Brigade. The others are the 69th, headquartered in Augsburg, and the 43rd in Heidelberg. SSgt. Steven Gilmore, the 52nd's dial central office coordinator, explained some of the brigade's mission. "We have the senior headquarters in Europe to contend with," he said. "The 43rd supports USAREUR Headquarters and the 69th has the mission of supporting the southeastern portion of Germany. "We cover an area of 14,500 square miles, but the 69th has the rest. They have a lot of little units and different kasernes and they're providing them with telephone service. But there are very few general officers out there who need all kinds of fancy communications equipment." According to Gilmore, all of the 52nd's equipment is being upgraded to state-of-the-art equipment. The unit's Patch Telecommunications Center is the largest communications center operated by the battalion. It processes approximately 65,000 incoming and outgoing messages per month and the reproduction requirements exceed 520,000 copies per month. Despite these other forms of communication, the dial services represent the most well-known portion of their capabilities. The unit operates dial central offices in 14 sites to include six sites outside the Stuttgart area. |
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| "We have a lot
of AUTOVON calls scheduled to Washington and the Pentagon and so on,"
he explained. "They're all trying to get a hold of someone here at
EUCOM or someone at EUCOM is trying to get a call to the Pentagon.
That's why I say we're the main direct support for HQ EUCOM." According to Zorga, the number of operators on hand to handle calls depends on the amount of traffic coming through the switchboard. For example, during the early morning hours before 7 a.m., there are only 3 or 4 operators available but during normal duty hours all ten operator positions are filled and ready to help. "If someone has trouble getting through to a party it's usually because the circuits are busy," Zorga said. "AUTOVON lines are constantly busy and we have some of them out from time to time for scheduled maintenance. That's another reason why a lot of people have trouble getting through." In the very near future getting through to your party won't be as difficult to do. As a matter-of-fact, if you can't reach your party, your phone might have a feature that will enable the new equipment's computer to do the redialing for you. According to SFC Rudolph Williams of the 52nd Signal's S2/3 office, the new equipment called the European Telephone System (ETS) comes to Europe as the result of an agreement between the United States and the German government. Siemens Corporation was designated to engineer the system. "The ETS installment is under way right now," states Williams. "Siemens began installing the system in June, however, the switch will not be turned on for use by military telephone users until late November. "There are several new features these phones will offer. However, in order to learn how the features are put into use, the subscriber will have to attend an operator's class. A schedule of class dates will be published in Stuttgart media in the future." Williams explained that the computerized system is solid-state equipment as opposed to the electromechanical equipment presently being used. "You will need to know how to dial from the new system into the old system," he explained. Under the new system customers will use the new 7-digit numbering plan which will be explained in the operator's class. There will be no change for military phone users dialing from an old system into the new ETS system. With ETS switches already installed in several locations in Germany, military phone users will have to listen to the dial tone (if they are out of their local area and unsure of what type of switch they are dialing from). The new ETS system has a solid, continuous dial tone while the old system has a broken tone. According to Williams, ETS will differ from the old system in several ways. "One difference is that some of the places that have 99 service will not have it when ETS is installed." (The reason for this is to reduce unnecessary traffic). "It's really important that the subscribers attend the class," stressed Williams. The new system will require some special handling of the telephone instrument and the class will describe the usage. As the ETS system matures, long distance calls will be completed quicker because of the increased capabilities of the new ETS network. There are a lot of great features in the new system but many of its benefits will not be realized until the entire ETS system is completed in Germany, sometime in 1987, and all of the old switches are replaced. |
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