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From: synsys!jeffj@uunet.uu.net
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: A Choice, and Then a Choice
Message-ID: <13761@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 16 Oct 90 02:49:07 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 743, Message 2 of 11


Steve Reed writes:
X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 734, Message 1 of 9

(Describing how the BOCs want to go into the information services...)

"[Summary of the argument for allowing BOCs to provide information
services and long distance, familiar to most tuning in here.]  Let
Congress know that you want the right to choose. And, you want it
now."

I'm not swayed by the ad because: 

1) The phone companies already spend millions of dollars on their PACs
(political action committees) and other lobbyists.

2) Aren't there enough computer networks already?  What do the phone
companies want to do: compete with Compuserve, Dow Jones, Prodigy,
Delphi, USENET, Fidonet, etc.?  Unless they have something new and
unique, they'll have the upper hand that the decree was preventing.

3) I don't believe that France and other countires invested so heavily
in videotext because the wanted to, but because they HAD TO to catch
up with their backlog!  I've heard that France had a waiting list
years long to get a phone, so it was common for a phone number to stay
with the house/apartment, thus making the phone book/directory
assistance useless.  Someone had to bankroll the videotext business,
so what was the motivation?  It sure wasn't purely a desire to advance
the state of the art!

4) How will it be tarriffed?  Have NYNEX's "INFO LOOK" and the
Canadian ALEX videotext done well enough to justify such services?  I
don't believe so.  I think the BOCs have run out of worthy causes to
spend their advertising money are are trying to create a new market,
 and get their finger in the pie.  Just like the misc.consumers
discussions about how banks are making people use the ATM machines in
favor of real tellers, the phone company will encourage people to use
the on-line services in preferance to the live operators for directory
assistance, etc.

I'm not saying it's all bad.  There are too many places that don't
have phone books.  If they made those calling card phone CRT terminals
interactive and allowed things like directory lookup (to eliminate the
usually mutilated phone book), rate lookup and showing the cost of the
call DURING THE PHONE CALL, then fine, expand those services and bring
them to my home.  Do you see these tests anywhere?  NO!  If the phone
companies were serious, there would be test markets first.

Side effects of such phones would be:

1) Encourage people to get and use calling cards since the terminal
phones don't take coins.

2) Knock the heck out of COCOTs that can't offer these services.
(Ummm, unless there's equal access to this information (haha, non BOC
payohones don't even get call supervision) then the BOC equipment will
have yet another monopoly on service.)


Jeffrey Jonas
jeffj@synsys.uucp