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From: rmadison@euler.berkeley.edu (Linc Madison)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Sprint and Three-way Calling
Message-ID: <5425@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 21 Mar 90 03:20:01 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 189, Message 10 of 10

In article <5228@accuvax.nwu.edu> Chip Rosenthal writes:
X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 177, Message 2 of 10

>Not necessarily.  I saw some tests of using V.35 modems with the three
>LD carriers in Data Communications about a year back.  In all tests
>(BER, call completion, setup time, etc.) AT&T won, except for one.
>Sprint had the best signal levels.  I doubt it's a quirk so much as
>different results for different conditions.

About three years ago, I was working on a project that required me
to send numerous faxen to Italy.  I thus had a strong interest in
signal quality comparisons between AT&T, MCI, and Sprint.  I found
that for voice communications, AT&T had a slight edge over MCI, with
Sprint a distant third.  For fax transmission, though, Sprint was the
winner by a mile, if you could get a circuit.  MCI was a close second,
and had enough of an advantage on circuit availability to make it the
overall winner.  AT&T was left in the dust  -- I almost never had a
retransmission on either Sprint or MCI, but AT&T botched the send due
to line noise about 65% of the time!  I wound up programming our fax
machine to auto-dial 9-10222-011-39-6-etc.  (Of course, the person who
reviews the phone bills sent my manager a note saying, "...but AT&T is
our official long-distance company."  When I explained the situation,
though, my manager said, "Don't sweat it; do what works."  Maybe his
common sense was why he was laid off...  1/2 :-)


Linc Madison   =   rmadison@euler.berkeley.edu