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From: pacbell!pb2esac!prahrens@mips.com
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Distinctive Ringing
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Date: 20 Dec 90 03:04:13 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 894, Message 10 of 10


Recent dicussion has produced:

>In another bit of PacBell stupidity, I recently tried to get
>distinctive ringing on my single line...

>Is this Catch-22 idiocy nationwide, or is it only PacBell that has
>this problem?

>[Moderator's Note: ComStar, also known as Intellidial in some areas and
>Starline in others is tariffed as a service for 2 or more actual lines
>in a group. Many or most of the features in ComStar would not work
>with just one line. In fact having only two lines makes ComStar a
>little bit of an overkill. It may be that PacBell only has Distinctive
>Ringing available through ComStar at present. I know Illinois Bell
>could not offer Distinctive Ringing until recently when they upgraded
>their software. They did offer it in Centrex and Starline service, but
>not on single residential lines until ahout two months ago.   PAT]

Once again, I write as an interested reader of your newsgroup, not as
a representative of any telecommunications company.

Your note is essentially correct.  The intended purpose of
"Distinctive Ringing" is to provide a difference in the alerting of
intragroup vs.  intergroup (i.e., incoming from the outside world)
calls, together with bells and whistles* -- actually additional
ringing patterns -- to distinguish attendant calls, etc.  This is
implemented in 1/1A ESS via Centrex, so calls from outside the Centrex
group are distinguished from those from within.  The current
generation of digital switches require a different strategy to obtain
this business objective.

The RBOC's are making a serious effort to deliver "Centrex-like"
services to smaller users.  Commstar (and I presume Intellidial) were
the earliest efforts to accomplish this.  Now RBOC's are making a
business decision to make Centrex available to POTS customers ... even
when the transition is transparent to the user, this usually entails
assigning the formerly POTS line to a Centrex group.  (As an aside, I
expect that ISDN will experience a similar "downward evolution" by the
turn of the century.)

In the case of your poster, notice he has only one line.  The presence
of an intragroup call is thus illogical (from this feature's point of
view) and there is no basis for distinctive ringing as the vendors
have defined it.

I would humbly like to point out that the RBOC's do not in general
design these features.  Rather, the features are the result of
consultation, discussion, and review among the Bellcore Client
Companies, vendors such as Northern Telecom and ATT, and so on.  Quite
often, the feature the user "sees" is a set (some would say "kludge")
of these design-by-committee features.

*Pun intended.


Merry Christmas,

Pete Ahrens