Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!netsys!vector!telecom-gateway From: nvuxr!deej@bellcore.bellcore.com (David Lewis) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Divestiture, Business and the General Public Message-ID: Date: 22 Jun 89 22:52:31 GMT Sender: news@vector.Dallas.TX.US Organization: Bell Communications Research Lines: 89 Approved: telecom-request@vector.dallas.tx.us X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@vector.dallas.tx.us X-TELECOM-Digest: volume 9, issue 209, message 5 of 6 In article , lars@salt.acc.com (Lars J Poulsen) writes: > In article > ms6b+@andrew.cmu.edu (Marvin Sirbu) writes: > > The subscriber line charge (SLC) is an element of interstate phone rates. > I consider that to be a fiction. It is something that *I* pay to my > local telephone company, and which cannot be waived, even if I disable > all toll calls from the line. The local telco does not have to > substiantiate the expense that is alledgedly covered by this charge, and > it is not tied to the actual access provided. The Subscriber Line Charge represents the cost to the LEC for providing your line with access to interexchange carriers. If you disable interexchange calls from a given line using CPE, you also have the ability to re-enable IX calls from that line without notifying the LEC. As far as the telco is concerned, you have the ability to gain access to IXCs at any point in time; therefore, you should be charged for this access. It is not technically infeasible to (either) block interexchange calls in the LEC network (or) to have the CPE notify the LEC when a given line has IXC access blocked or unblocked. However, either option requires some technical changes from the way the network functions today. Blocking in the network requires a database lookup either at the switch or a centralized database; CPE notification of the LEC is a customer network management-type function which could *probably* be handled by a new Q.932 (ISDN Supplementary Services) message. Neither case, though, is doable today. > I wrote: > >> (3) Equitable charges for all customers. Includes elimination of CENTREX > >> service. If your subscription includes 20 instruments, each with its > >> own wire pair into a switch at CO premises, this is really 20 lines. > >> The pricing of Centrex service to pretend that this is a virtual PBX > >> is sheer obfuscation. > Marvin said: > > Equity requires that 20 ordinary phone lines should not cost simply 20 > > times the cost of one phone line, since there are economies of scale. > I do not object to volume discounts. But Centrex is NOT a volume > discount. Centrex is a tariff that allows a subscriber with 400 > instruments to describe this as a virtual PBX with 12 outside lines. You > then pay only for 12 lines plus rental on the non-existent PBX. I > maintain that this is sheer obfuscation. You've lost me here. I don't work with Centrex, so my knowledge is limited, but my understanding is that, if you have 400 telephone sets (or modems or whatever), you have the equivalent of 400 loops running back to the CO (whether they be individual loops, or a few multiplexed T1s, or whatever). You're paying the telco for what it costs to run the lines to your locations, install whatever muxes are necessary, and manage the system for you. With a PBX, you pay for however many trunks to the local CO you want, plus the cost of the PBX. If you want 12 trunks, you can have at most 12 conversations outside the PBX at any time. With Centrex, if you have 400 phones, you have the capacity to have all 400 simultaneously conversing outside the Centrex group. Yes, Centrex is a tariff -- but a "virtual PBX"? Not really. It has its own advantages and disadvantages. > >> (4) Least call call routing. > >Centrex users can in fact buy such a service from the local telephone > >company, but it is costly. The reasons it costs so much is an element > >of the divestiture which could be changed without changing the > >Constitution. Bascially, the MFJ forbids a BOC from having anything to > >do with "selecting" which long distance company carries your traffic. > > This makes some sense. I still think it would be a great convenience. I'm not so sure. The IXC market, even though 90% of the traffic is carried by the big three, is still pretty wide open (I think there are still on the order of 100+ IXCs). There's a wide range of cost, quality, coverage, and so forth. I, as a user, know my needs for interexchange telephone service. Cost may be the driver; service may be the driver; billing quality may be the driver; etc. This fits with the parallel discussion that's been going on -- how would you like it if your midnight data dump from your satellite office back to the main office got routed via Joe's Long Distance Company, which has such lousy sound quality that your holding time doubles because of all the retransmits you need, because the algorithm decided on by the FCC mandates that that's the "best" carrier for you to be carried by? A lot more decides the choice of IXC beyond cost, and the person in the best position to decide is the user. Disclaimer: Bellcore doesn't even know I'm saying this. -- David G Lewis ...!bellcore!nvuxr!deej "If this is paradise, I wish I had a lawnmower."