Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!aplcen!haven!decuac!decwrl!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!ames!mailrus!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request From: marc@ttc.uucp (Marc O'Krent) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Telebit vs. Sprint Message-ID: <8541@accuvax.nwu.edu> Date: 1 Jun 90 06:52:28 GMT Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu Reply-To: Marc O'Krent Organization: Cochran&Associates, Menlo Park, CA Lines: 71 Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 406, Message 5 of 8 In article <8180@accuvax.nwu.edu> Jim Gottlieb writes: >X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 379, Message 11 of 12 >In article <8047@accuvax.nwu.edu> John Higdon >writes: >>As far as I am concerned, MCI is not a real player for serious long >>distance users. While they may have lots of "suits" running around >>schmoozing it up to their corporate customers, the service they >>provide is substandard to either Sprint or AT&T by an amount far >>exceeding any discount they provide. >I must agree. Unfortunately, I bet that most of the executive >committees who decide to go with MCI do so based only on pieces of >paper and never once actually pick up the phone to try the service. >This is the same reason why PBX manufacturers can and do get away with >stupid feature implementation. The buying decisions are made after >reading proposals in a cute binder. But they never so much as spend >ten minutes to see how the phone feels, sounds, etc. I must disagree, regionally. Like most telecommunications services that belong to companies headquartered on the east coast, MCI has followed the unfortunate pattern of making the West last. As a former MCI employee in National Accounts, I can tell you that on the east coast, MCI connection are as good if not better than Sprint and/or AT&T. The reason for this is simple: MCI deployed their fiber and digital switches primarily in the Northeast corridor. MCI only has four major points at which calls are actually "switched" with the balance of their terminals simply acting as repeaters or pass throughs to one of the four switching centers. MCI had more subscribers per unit area on the east coast, and being a company hq'ed there, chose to make the majority of the "digital" investment there. I can still remember the analog microwave that was in service in California. Typical of being left to last, there was supposed to be only something like 30 miles between each repeater. Unfortunately, MCI ran out of resources and so there was something more like 80 miles between instead. Every time the fog rolled in near San Jose, there went the connections between LA and SF. In fact, one engineer figured that the signal was actually bouncing off the ground in between repeaters. Although there is fiber on the the California acquaduct, it is used primarily for private line, DDS and the State of Calif. There is supposed to be digital microwave from Richardson TX to the west coast (Richardson is one of the four magic points), but I have yet to get a digitial connection from Texas. Out here, MCI is definetely not as good as Sprint or AT&T, but out east it is as good technically. (As a side note about the west getting features last, you might recall an article that appeared here recently under the heading of "A piece of ESS history." The article pointed at a 1965 ESS deployment of an ESS machine *with* custom calling features available. Althought the first ESS was also deployed in LA in 1965, it wasn't untill about 1977 that custom calling was offered. At least that was the first year we were able to offer it to customers - I was also a Pac Bell service rep. --Excuse me, "Pacific Telephone.") Marc O'Krent The Telephone Connection Internet: marc@ttc.info.com MCIMail: mokrent Voice Mail: +1 213 551 9620