Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mailrus!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request From: john@zygot.ati.com (John Higdon) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Anachronistic Rip-off Message-ID: <1768@accuvax.nwu.edu> Date: 3 Dec 89 07:35:51 GMT Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu Organization: Green Hills and Cows Lines: 139 Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 9, Issue 549, message 1 of 7 In article <1750@accuvax.nwu.edu>, macy@fmsystm.UUCP (Macy Hallock) writes: > First: many carriers are continuing to use Feature Group B (950-XXXX) > access which does not incur a local calling charge. > Feature Group A (std. phone number) is fast fading, but always incurs > a local charge. Are you sure its FGA and not FGB? And I have seen > numbers that look like FGA but do not incur a local message charge. They gave me their access numbers. The prefix was a very ordinary downtown San Jose prefix. Nothing special at all about it. They told me that *in the future* they would be getting 950 (FGB) access. I do know the difference, thank you very much, and have even read the big yellow Bellcore manual on the topic. > There are sound reasons to use FGB and not FGD: access cost from the > phone co. to the carrier is about half that of FGD on both the setup > and per minute transport elements. Important if the savings are to be > passed on to the customer. But it didn't pencil out. The cost of the local call + their call costs were not much of a bargain, so your point is moot. If they were getting great savings by using FGA (and it was FGA, not FGB), it was simply to help their own bottom line. > >FGA has no answer supervision. When I confronted them with this, they > >claimed that their "time before answer assumption" was very generous ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > You cannot assume that just because the orgination is FGA or FGB that > no answer supervision is in use. Read what I wrote about what their technician claimed. Since when do you use time before answer assumption if you have answer supervision? > Answer supervsion is available to the carrier on terminating trunks > provided by the telco on all FG's: A,B,C and D. Its just that the > carrier has to order and pay for the feature on FGA and B trunks, but > its usually standard on FGC and D terminating trunks. And if they have to order it and pay extra for it, I think it's safe to assume that they won't utilize it. After all, each little thing they have to pay extra for is going to erode their profits that much more, or, to give them the benefit of the doubt, reduce the great savings they can pass on to the customer. > Now, the question is: does the carrier have it and use it? No they didn't. And they were quite frank about it. > Do not assume dialers are automatically programmed incorrectly. Do > you have good reason to believe this company is less than reputable? Yes, I went out and visited some of their customers, one current, and two past. The past customers showed me their OCC bills for LOCAL calls that had been intercepted by the dialers. Their current customer allowed me to play with their phone. The dialers were not only programmed incorrectly, but different lines in the same trunk group were progammed differently. This I pointed out to them and they indicated that they were going to check it out. > I have seen many instances where sending the intra-LATA calls thru the > carrier is advantageous to both the carrier and customer. Check the > rate tables...often the cost is the same, but the addtional dollar > volume will move the discount they offer on the bottom line up a > notch. No way can it be advantageous to pay for a local call twice! You are already paying for the local call to the OCC's switch. Anything they add to the bill is gouge to the customer. Not to mention increased connection time, poorer transmission, etc., etc. > Does this mean > "Dialers Are Bad For Us All" ? Yes, it does. What possible justification can there be to add a layer of electronic gauze to any system when the technology exists to avoid it? And is cheaper? > No one company has a monopoly on lousy service....it > appears to be a shared concession. Wrong. GTE of California might qualify for an exclusive. Sorry, I couldn't resist that one. > John, you have not given us enough information here to justify this > conclusion. Do you mean (un)Equal Access is all we will ever need? Actually I did in the original post. You were too busy reading between the lines and missed what I actually said. I said: 1. They used FGA. 2. They admitted they had no answer supervision. 3. That I had checked with their customers and that they were paying too much for local calls due to improperly programmed dialers. 4. That I had personal experience with faulty dialers. To my aging eyes, that looks like the pertinent information. > I agree that most newer PBX'x should offer you complete flexibility in > routing your calls. Most key systems do not offer this, though. For > cost reasons, Automatic Route Selection is a feature of systems over > 30-40 stations, usually. My client had the option of using his own PBX, which does ARS. The OCC indicated that they would be happy to have it happen that way. Even though that would negate my objections 3 and 4 above, I opted not to go with them; the savings were too marginal. > Disclaimer: This is my opinion. Just because I picked on the telcos > in this posting doesn't mean I hate them...I just don't agree with > the idea that there is any one "right" way for something to be done. > John is being flamed here only because he generalized that "This choice > was bad for us all" (And I think he knows better!) And I'm flaming back (rather than sending you an e-mail bomb) because you seemed to take issue with everything I said and completely ignored my reasons for saying it. You also made some interesting assumptions and generalizations. You seemed to assume that I couldn't tell the difference between FGA and FGB, that I was confused concerning trunk side vs station side CO connection, that I was ignorant concerning the ability to provide station side answer supervision, and that my (totally justified) suspicion of OCCs using dialers was leading all God's children astray. As to the matter of choices in the telecommunications industry, there are many old technologies that we no longer need to consider. Using dialers to provide long distance connections is one of them. If you can document one single OCC that, using dialers, provides better and cheaper service than its competitors who use FGD (and be sure to include those local units!), they I will be more than pleased to eat my words and any other crow of your choice publicly in this forum. But beware -- I can produce documentation for every assertion that I have made on this topic. John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 723 1395 john@zygot.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o !