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From: gdw@groucho.att.com (Gordon D Woods)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: A New Way to be COCOTted
Message-ID: <14005@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 24 Oct 90 13:01:52 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 761, Message 8 of 10


 From article <13928@accuvax.nwu.edu>, by mbw@unix.cis.pitt.edu
(Martin B Weiss):

 From Moderator's note:

> decisions. The caller 'decided to' use a COCOT. Of course, we know how
> that goes: he probably decided nothing, since most phone users know
> nothing about it to start with. He saw a phone and used it. If you
> tell him later that his choice of phones caused you to get a higher
> than expected phone bill, you embarass a friend.  So I usually say
> nothing and go ahead and pay for it. But my trained ear is listening

PAT, I can't believe your note. We are the ones who know what is
happening and it is incumbent upon us to inform people and put
"embarassment" aside. If we don't do it, things like defective COCOTs
will endure because the public remains confused.


[Moderator's Note: I'll speak out when asked to do so ... but talking
to some people about relatively technical telecom stuff is a waste of
time. A good many folks -- maybe most of the public -- cannot tell the
difference between a telco payphone and a COCOT without looking
closely, and even then, they are decieved. When COCOTs first started
appearing, *I* could tell the difference easily. Now the COCOT
manufacturers are taking care to make their instruments look exactly
like the genuine thing; even *I* can only tell the difference
sometimes by reading the instruction card in detail: if it says for
Repair Service to call something other than 611, for example ... or if
it gives a strange dial tone of its own, or a few other things. You
expect the public to pay attention?  All these years after divestiture
the public still refers to 'Ma Bell' and 'the phone company'...
admittedly that makes it great for business at the OCC's and the AOS
snakepits; it makes it rough for the rest of us though.  PAT]