Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!ria!uwovax.uwo.ca!telecom-request From: john@zygot.ati.com (John Higdon) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Why Telco Should be Permitted to Maintain Monopoly Message-ID: Date: 16 Mar 91 11:33:00 GMT Sender: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Reply-To: John Higdon Organization: Green Hills and Cows Lines: 54 Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 11, Issue 209, Message 10 of 11 Louis Linneweh writes: > In a word: standards. De facto, perhaps; obsolete, quite often; > archaic occasionally; but usable standards none the less. For the > public and even for telephony equipment suppliers. They just couldn't > change the system fast enough toget a marketing advantage. Hmmmm. Standards are as firm as ever since the breakup. Bellcore, the God of telephone standards and blessings is as healthy as ever. In fact, of necessity, the standards are now fully documented and available to all instead of being secretly tucked away with the attitude that "only the phone company and its employees need to know about such things". > I used to know how to place a long distance call from a pay phone > virtually anywhere in the country. I used to feel confident my kids > could call me from those same phones. Is that so? I remember many years before anyone had ever heard of Judge Greene. Traveling around the country, I found some phones could direct dial long distance and some could not. Of those that could not, sometimes it was necessary to dial "0"; from others "110"; from still others "112". Of those that could dial long distance direct, some required a "1"; some required a "110"; some a "circle digit"; some requested the calling number while others did not. Oh, and by the way, almost none of the payphones would allow the customer to dial his own long distance call (at least before TSPS). > OK, I'm exagerating, I suppose. None the less, I don't > always know how to make a call from a pay phone anymore. Yes, you are. And being very short sighted at that. You have focused on the one major aberration of divestiture, COCOTs. The problem here is that no one is enforcing regulations already in place. And I am very curious: what is so hard about placing a call on a COCOT? All of the complaints that I have heard center around the cost and deception regarding the long distance carrier, not that it requires any special effort or knowledge to place the call. > That's my reason for supporting the regulated monopoly of the phone > company. It is a pretty weak one. Besides the seven RBOCs in this country there are hundreds of independent telcos providing LEC services. They were there before divestiture as well. Did you feel that your precious standards were being violated by all of these different companies then? If hundreds of telephone companies around the country can maintain standards, then two or three LECs can maintain them in a particular community. Claiming that monopoly is necessary to preserve the ease and convenience of telephony is a wheezing old argument that even the telcos are beginning to put to rest. John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 723 1395 john@zygot.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o !