[HECnet] Phone company (US) and DEC hardware and the mainframe

Hello! Here's an interesting issue, we all know who created UNIX and its descendants. I do know that it was extended to accommodate the needs of running the phone exchanges that the companies setup to use the ESS and its relatives. But wasn't there a story floating around that they had worked out how to have the phone companies systems to communicate the necessary billing specs to an ordinary IBM system, who'd eventually create the bills? (Or even had the same DEC hardware who ran the phone system, do the billing itself?) Basically the story thus told contains a heck of a lot of holes, and in here I'm hoping that someone does know the details. Running those systems now must be quite an accomplishment now though. ----- Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com "This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again."