AT&T High Seas Service

The now-defunct AT&T High Seas Service consisted of radiotelephone stations WOO (transmitter station in Ocean Gate, NJ (coord|39|55|38|N|74|06|55|W|scale:1000), receiver station in Manahawkin, New Jersey, USA) [ [http://www.long-lines.net/places-routes/OceanGateNJ/index.html The Microwave Radio and Coaxial Cable Networksof the Bell System] ] , WOM (Miami, Florida) and KMI (Point Reyes, California).

History

Before satellite communication systems were widely available, the only way ships at sea had to communicate with the rest of the world was via HF SSB connections to land stations. A vessel at sea would make radio contact with one of those stations, and the operator would patch the radio connection though to a telephone call made over the PSTN. The charges were typically settled by making the landline connection a collect call. Larger vessels maintained accounts with AT&T.

In the years prior to regular telephone service being available in Mexican towns such as La Paz, Cabo San Lucas and Puerto Vallarta, KMI provided service to certain hotels and resorts in those locations. Sometimes a hotel would register a land based transmitter as a yacht, and give it a fictitious name in order to provide phone service to their customersFact|date=September 2007.

AT&T shut down all three stations on November 9, 1999.

Existing services

It is believed that the only remaining commercial sources of high seas high frequency radiotelephone service in the US are stations WLO, WCL, KLB, and KNN, all run by [http://www.shipcom.com/services.html Shipcomm Services, LLC] .

External links

* [http://users.rcn.com/rdisbrow/highseas/highseas.htm Memories of AT&T's High Seas Radiotelephone Service]
* [http://www.oceannavigator.com/site/csrv/content.asp?id=472 Ocean Voyager Magazine]
* [http://www.radiomarine.org/KMI Photos of KMI (and its destruction)]