G.E. MARK Software

I worked for GTE (General Telephone and Electric) from 1992 as a contractor and later full-time in helpdesk role supporting the MARK system.

The software was licensed to G.T.E. by GE - General Electric.

MARK was an acronym for "Mechanised Assignment and Record Keeping".

Within the system you could track and create copper telecom assignments including:

• Customer Addresses
• Remote Terminals and addresses served by them
• Cable pairs that fed the terminal
• Crossbox pairs in and out (feeder and distribution pairs)
• Cosmic frame mapping
• Central Office equipment - switch types, line cards and type (LNI) etc
• Phone number (TDN) to LNI relationship
• Phone features including calling features such as Call Waiting and Long Distance Carrier
• Recent Change (Software switch provisioning)

There was another system called MARKSOE (MARK Service Order Entry) where orders were entered by customer service reps. Changes were sent over to the MARK system and automatically posted where possible.

The screen was a DOS terminal emulator and had a blue background.

The program was written in FORTRAN and most of the macro commands were run using that.

Modules were entered by typing a /E and then the module name you wanted to work with.

Modules I remember:

• /E TDE - The assignment module
• /NUM 687 - Would allow you to change Wire Center 687
• /E LNUTIL - The record of CO line equipment
• /E TDUTIL - TN (Telephone number) administration

An example TDE transaction would look something like this:

INT;DP=E;FAC=1-123;TRM=ABC;TDN=5551212;IC1=288;FEA=CNID,TC.

Rough translation would be INT - Initialize ;