AT&T Tower In Spring

[lockmat]

This thing has been here ever since I was a kid but I've never known what it is.

I thought it might be AT&T related because they have trucks with their logos parked inside the fenced area.

Anyone know?

[RedScare]

At&T microwave tower.

[lockmat]

At&T microwave tower.

From the sound of this website, it sounds like it was possibly used for:

Long Lines...concerned with the maintenance of the longer circuits -- those connecting individual Bell operating companies, longer distances, and international calling.

Do we know if that's accurate or not?

Do you know if they're still in use, and if so what it's current usage is?

[editor]

From the sound of this website, it sounds like it was possibly used for:

Do we know if that's accurate or not?

Do you know if they're still in use, and if so what it's current usage is?

It's accurate. The roundish things at the top are microwave horns used to move telephone calls long distances. Since Texas is so flat, this is the most effective way to get it done.

Of course, the microwaves likely aren't carrying phone calls anymore. It's probably just a flood of pure data now. Most landline phone calls get converted to data once they leave your neighborhood these days.

If you pop that location up on Google Earth and line up the Line tool to match the direction of the horns, you should be able to draw a straight line to another tower a couple of hundred miles away that it's exchanging signals with.

[lockmat]

It's accurate. The roundish things at the top are microwave horns used to move telephone calls long distances. Since Texas is so flat, this is the most effective way to get it done.

Of course, the microwaves likely aren't carrying phone calls anymore. It's probably just a flood of pure data now. Most landline phone calls get converted to data once they leave your neighborhood these days.

If you pop that location up on Google Earth and line up the Line tool to match the direction of the horns, you should be able to draw a straight line to another tower a couple of hundred miles away that it's exchanging signals with.

very interesting, thank you.

There's gotta be more in the Houston area, but I don't think I've ever seen one. Where are they?

[Gooch]

It's a former AT&T Longlines tower. The Long Lines system was a cold war secured communication system, that also carried peace time long-distance traffic. It was the doomsday communication system designed to ensure contnuity of government and civil defense... that fortunetly was never needed. It was also used for secure national security traffic relatively routinely. AT&T's role in our cold war effort is one that is highly overlooked.

Interestingly, when you see one of these towers, almost always the attached service building is nuclear blast hardened. You can often see large ventillation shafts that are used for air scrubbers, generator exhausts, etc.

A few background links:

http://www.porticus.org/bell/longlines.html

http://long-lines.net/places-routes/index.html

http://long-lines.net/documents/index.html

http://long-lines.net/index.html

[lockmat]

yall know when this one was built?

[editor]

very interesting, thank you.

There's gotta be more in the Houston area, but I don't think I've ever seen one. Where are they?

Almost every city has at least one downtown, though they're often not as conspicuous because they're mounted on top of a building, not a red-and-white freestanding tower. I've seen some remarkable ones in Minneapolis and Los Angeles.

There's one in downtown Houston, and I think a smaller one out near Greenway Plaza. The Greenway one was probably not part of the Long Lines network mentioned above, because it was built by Southwestern Bell before AT&T went out of business and SBC bought the AT&T brand.

AT&T horns in Minneapolis: (concealed behind the glass panels), from HAIF's sister site, Twin Cities Architecture.

Qwest horns in Minneapolis, also from HAIF's MSP sister site:

AT&T horns in Los Angeles, from HAIF's sister site, Southland Architecture:

[editor]

These are the AT&T horns I was thinking of downtown:

and the ones in the Greenway Plaza area (originally the Southwestern Bell Weslayan Toll Building)

You'll notice the Greenway Plaza rack no longer has the giant horns that the AT&T building still does. It's hard to tell from the picture, but I bet some much smaller ones are still scattered around in there. I imagine that with the urbanization of Southeast Texas and the fact that SBC owns both facilities, this building went mostly fiber instead of microwave.

[RedScare]

There's one in downtown Houston, and I think a smaller one out near Greenway Plaza. The Greenway one was probably not part of the Long Lines network mentioned above, because it was built by Southwestern Bell before AT&T went out of business and SBC bought the AT&T brand.

Not sure what you are referring to here. AT&T was the original monopoly. Southwestern Bell was one of its regional phone companies. In 1983, the breakup of AT&T created 7 spinoff regional companies, of which Southwestern Bell was one. AT&T Long Lines, the long distance arm of the company, became AT&T in the breakup. AT&T built and operated the microwave towers as part of its long distance services. Because of their limited capacity, fiber optics have made them all but obsolete.

[editor]

Not sure what you are referring to here. AT&T was the original monopoly. Southwestern Bell was one of its regional phone companies. In 1983, the breakup of AT&T created 7 spinoff regional companies, of which Southwestern Bell was one. AT&T Long Lines, the long distance arm of the company, became AT&T in the breakup. AT&T built and operated the microwave towers as part of its long distance services. Because of their limited capacity, fiber optics have made them all but obsolete.

I'm talking about how on November 18, 2005 SBC ate AT&T, causing it to cease to exist. The next day it re-branded SBC as "AT&T."

As for microwave towers being obsolete, it's not. Not by a long shot. Phone companies erect new microwave towers every week, check the FCC database of new license applications. Fiber just isn't cost-effective over some distances and terrains, utility easements for fiber don't come cheap, and there's no point in chucking out billions of dollars worth of towers and backhauls just because something new has come along. Microwave is a pipe, just like fiber, and can be repurposed for any number of uses, not just analog phone calls.

Using the off-the-shelf 1950's standards, each one of those horns carried 54,000 simultaneous analog phone calls. Converting to digital only increases that capacity.

Microwave horns have a range of a little over 40 miles. The latest generation trans-Atlantic fiber optic cables require a repeater every 60 miles. Repeaters are expensive, and more importantly -- there are lots of places (mountains, tundra, etc...) where you'll never be able lay fiber.

Fiber is great, has tremendous bandwidth, and is suitable for certain high-yield applications (where you can charge a ton of money, or have many users on each end to split the cost), but microwave networks are still very much thriving.

[20thStDad]

Offshore platforms use microwave quite commonly as well. It's damn slow but I guess more reliable than whatever the alternative is.

[RedScare]

I'm talking about how on November 18, 2005 SBC ate AT&T, causing it to cease to exist. The next day it re-branded SBC as "AT&T."

As for microwave towers being obsolete, it's not. Not by a long shot. Phone companies erect new microwave towers every week, check the FCC database of new license applications. Fiber just isn't cost-effective over some distances and terrains, utility easements for fiber don't come cheap, and there's no point in chucking out billions of dollars worth of towers and backhauls just because something new has come along. Microwave is a pipe, just like fiber, and can be repurposed for any number of uses, not just analog phone calls.

Using the off-the-shelf 1950's standards, each one of those horns carried 54,000 simultaneous analog phone calls. Converting to digital only increases that capacity.

Microwave horns have a range of a little over 40 miles. The latest generation trans-Atlantic fiber optic cables require a repeater every 60 miles. Repeaters are expensive, and more importantly -- there are lots of places (mountains, tundra, etc...) where you'll never be able lay fiber.

Fiber is great, has tremendous bandwidth, and is suitable for certain high-yield applications (where you can charge a ton of money, or have many users on each end to split the cost), but microwave networks are still very much thriving.

These oldtimers seem to believe that microwave telephone transmission has become all but obsolete, except in a few remote areas where fiber optic is not cost effective.

http://www.thecentraloffice.com/Microwave/microwave%20sites.htm

http://www.drgibson.com/towers/

They do agree with you that the towers are being repurposed as cell towers and to transmit cell traffic. In that sense, I would also agree with you. I was commenting on the original use of the towers, long distance phone calls. Perhaps we just have different definitions of the word "thriving".