Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!netsys!vector!telecom-gateway From: bet@orion.mc.duke.edu (Bennett Todd) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Consumer Opts For POTS Message-ID: Date: 29 Jun 89 19:52:21 GMT Sender: news@vector.Dallas.TX.US Reply-To: bet@orion.mc.duke.edu (Bennett Todd) Organization: Diagnostic Physics, Radiology, DUMC Lines: 61 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 219, message 2 of 8 In-reply-to: apple!zygot!john@decwrl.dec.com (John Higdon) In article , I wrote a fairly deliberately inflammatory overstatement of how bad the local telco and the new departmental PBX have been at providing POTS. In article , apple!zygot!john@decwrl (John Higdon) writes a fairly reasonable rebuttal, which I liked. He rightly pointed out that I am wide of the mark criticising the technology; what is happening here is inept installation and maintenance. However, I would tend to maintain that inept handling of installation and support of the new digital technologies is extremely common. What I've seen in the circumstances I enjoy matches what I've heard and read about in other places. Faced with costs rising on all sides, a telco buys a new switch (or an organization buys a new PBX) on cost savings grounds, and fails to plan for the necessary (but hopefully temporary) increased manpower costs of additional training and whatnot to manage the switchover gracefully; instead of delivering improved performance, they deliver an immediate severe degradation, which may or may not settle out over time and eventually leave the customers better off. I would hazard that the smart money is on "not". This kind of situation, where a new technology offers real improvements, but is so over-hyped that switchover is botched, is responsible for a large proportion of the traffic on RISKS digest. To provide more detail, the problems at home were mostly of the "incoming callers get forwarded to never-never land", and "no dial tone" variety, and are easily explained by a badly overloaded and somewhat ineptly programmed switch. I am sure that they aren't intrinsic to the new technology; however I am also sure that it isn't coincidence that they came bundled in with it. The problems at work are even more blatently obvious; we hit the capacity of our very old switch, and had to buy a new one (we couldn't even get our current one properly maintained, never mind expanding it). Simultaneously and completely independantly, we had a problem with too few operators, not well enough trained. The new PBX was sold to the folks in the business office who chose it partially on the claim that its new features would allow a smaller number of operators to be able to handle more traffic efficiently, since the operator's console interaction was more streamlined. This may be true; however, in the face of a shortage of operators, and extant problems with their level of training, the new technology exacerbated the existing difficulties. So on one hand I agree that I am wrong to criticise the new digital telephony innovations; they really are technologically superior. I still maintain that I am not imagining the problems they have brought. Even though these problems are a consequence of bad planning decisions, if they commonly accompany "upgrades" to digital switches then they have to be counted as part of the cost of the newer technology. Technological innovation doesn't exist in a vacuum; evaluation of costs and benefits has to take into account the people in the situation, and how they will handle the changes. I am griping that the changes to newer telephony switching systems are often handled extremely poorly, enough to produce an overall severe drop in functionality delivered to the customers. -Bennett bet@orion.mc.duke.edu