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From: infmx!johnw@uunet.uu.net (John Wheeler)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Alternate Telephone Service
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Date: 1 Nov 90 00:07:20 GMT
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asuvax!rako!rakoczynskij@ncar.ucar.edu (Jurek Rakoczynski) writes:

>Can anyone summarize the status of 'Alternate Telephone Service
>supplier'.  I can only remember about some larger city (NY?) where a
>(cable co.?) was installing (fiber optics?) to the homes and was
>planning to provide alternate phone service in competion with the
>local telco. This was in addition to other services available on the
>fiber.  I don't remember where I read this, but I am not confusing
>this with just running fiber to the homes, like in California.  I
>remember the term 'Alternate Telephone Service' or something like
>that.

I was a subscriber to an 'Alternate Telephone Service' of sorts while
I lived in Atlanta, for several years. An Atlanta company (now out of
business) named StarTouch installed switches at several apartment
complexes around town.

They were working on - well, I guess a lot of loopholes. They got
their trunks from Southern Bell and did their own billing, (sooner or
later you got a bill, of sorts), they had an agreement with what was
SouthernNet (now part of Telecom*USA?) to provide exclusive LD
service. You had no choice of carriers, but they undercut the Southern
Bell rate for equivalent service by 25% or so. By default, you got
three-way, forwarding, call waiting, voice mail with message light
(they provided hotel-type phones), personal speed dialing, and
pre-programmed system speed dialing of several hundred businesses.

The complex management even used the voice mail system to mass-mail
messages to the tenants.  The switch was made by - I believe - Solid
State of Kennesaw, GA, and, worked fine 90% of the time. The problems?
Well, there were occasionally not enough local trunks, or not enough
LD trunks, or the system that sent the billing code to the LD carrier
wasn't working, or the building power would go off and the UPS would
run dry and the system go dead, or the software would glitch, and
there was a certain trunk that ALWAYS sounded horrible.  But, usually,
it worked fine. They closed business about a year ago.  Good idea,
but....


John Wheeler