Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!ria!uwovax.uwo.ca!telecom-request From: motcid!linneweh@uunet.uu.net (Louis Linneweh) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Why Telco Should be Permitted to Maintain Monopoly Message-ID: Date: 18 Mar 91 17:56:46 GMT Sender: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Organization: Motorola Inc., Cellular Infrastructure Div., Arlington Hgts, IL Lines: 84 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 217, Message 3 of 8 john@zygot.ati.com (John Higdon) writes: > 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 I'm very familiar with Bellcore standards, and you are quite right. The documantation of inter-system standards is a very healthy developement (but one that was well underway before Judge Greene.) I was thinking more of the user interface, which you seem to feel was never very good. Perhaps I'm not as well traveled as you are. But I was very frustrated in the waiting room of a metropolitan airport (Atlanta? Dallas?) which had payphones with special buttons for all the ICs but AT&T. AT&T had their own CRT credit card reading phones, which I couldn't figure out how to use (after 15 minutes, including calling the "assistance" number listed "What kind of phone?"), I discovered that the phone was just broken, and the one next to it worked fine! (It was so unfamiliar and "complex" I didn't realize the phone was not working! I thought I was doing something wrong!) > ... And being very short sighted at that. Sorry, I do tend to be overly satisfied with things that I think are working well, and don't see as much need to progress as other, more agressive business people. > 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? I guess I addressed this. Funny how it was AT&T itself that caused my grief, but it was the result of the MFJ. I've had other, similar problems trying to use my AT&T card from the random phone (and my kids from their college dorm room phones, where experimentation was the only way to learn, and that has changed at least once this year.) > 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. Probably because most people who complain attribute to malice that which I write off as discourtesy. Complaining about inconvenievce is not as important as exposing an attempt to defraud. But I do feel, in the larger sense, that the door was opened by the MFJ for providers, out to make a buck, to abuse the public. Telecom buyer beware is the order of the day. Maybe a small price for progress, but a price that could continue to grow since the general population has no organized voice to compete with the special intrests of businesses. > 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. It is an old argument, and a good one. The hundreds of independent phone companies HAD to follow the de facto standards when there was only one carrier. But now, each carrier is trying to inovate to "capture" more of the market. Progress. The RBOCS must now join the general rush to "retain and recapture" market. More progress. Not the end of the world, just the end of an era ... that had some advantages. By the way, I have come to believe that, since we already have IC competition, there would be little more to lose by letting the other shoe drop. I think it is time for LEC competition. Surprised? Cellular has survived - some would say flourished - in a competitive environment. I would like to be able to say: "I don't like the service I'm getting, connect my drop to the other LEC please." And in my simple view of things that would leave a wire-line monopoly from my house to the mainframe, where I could be cross connected to one of several LECs. But the cable companies would like to even broaden that, I'm sure. OK. Let it rip. But my job involves thinking about phone calls. I do it all day. I'd like to think one of the results of all that work is the ability to actually MAKE a call WITHOUT having to think. I'm just one of many people designing telecom systems though, so how do we preserve simplicity and still provide the progress everyone wants?