Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!decwrl!sun-barr!texsun!texbell!vector!telecom-gateway From: zygot!john@apple.com (John Higdon) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Why can't I choose AT&T? Message-ID: Date: 17 Jul 89 19:49:02 GMT Sender: news@vector.Dallas.TX.US Organization: ATI Wares Team Lines: 29 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 243, message 3 of 9 In article , techwood!johnw@gatech.edu (John Wheeler) writes: > The apartment complex I live in has the same sort of arrangement. Instead > of a Southern Bell line, my service comes from a company called Star*Touch, > and they have an agreement with Telecom*USA (all these stars!). The switch Is all this for real? It sounds like the plot of a scary, futuristic movie. It almost seems that what Judge Greene does with one hand is undone with the other. Divestiture was supposedly going to enhance competition, improved service offerings, and create a healthy business climate for telecommunications. So instead what we have is an apartment complex owner linking up with some get-rich-quick scam operation to deny residents the opportunity of choosing their long distance carrier, deprive them of having local operating company special services, and effectively cut them off from the outside world. So if Star*Touch charges the normal monthly local service rate, they make tons of profit, since they will only be paying for a fraction of the number of trunks compared to the number of subscribers they will be serving. And so if a resident can't call out because all trunks are busy, who cares? He has no choice. Where's he gonna go? And what about the resident who wants ten lines? I sure hope this bad idea never catches on! -- John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 723 1395 john@zygot.uucp | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o !