Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!lll-winken!telecom-request From: jimmy@tokyo07.info.com (Jim Gottlieb) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Front Door to Apartment Phone Service Message-ID: Date: 26 Mar 91 13:51:17 GMT Sender: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Reply-To: Jim Gottlieb Organization: Info Connections, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, Japan Lines: 64 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 246, Message 2 of 7 telecom@eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Moderator) writes: > Prior to divestiture, Illinois Bell (and perhaps other telcos) offered > a ... service which allowed for calls between the front door in an > apartment building lobby and the individual apartments > Then came divestiture, and in His Wisdom, the Judge ruled that > Enterphone was just the sort of service telcos should NOT be allowed > to offer. Patrick intimates that this was (another) flawed decision by His Wisdom. On the contrary, I agree that telephone companies should not be involved in this type of service. There is no reason to involve your telco in the unlocking of the front door to your apartment building. This is ridiculous. This is clearly an application where on-premise equipment makes much more sense. Besides, it was hardly just making use of some features of existing switching equipment. Rather, the whole thing was a huge kludge. > One disadvantage to this system was that the pairs coming to the > building had to be expressly dedicated > In the central office itself, there were jumpers between the Enterphone > device and the frames, and these had to be tagged with warnings not to > swap them out > Another disadvantage was that if something went wrong en-route > to the building; then this caused the apartment building front door > to go out of service And then there was the cost: > So, a fifty unit apartment building would pay about $115 - $120 per > month for the service. Not to mention that initial installation had to be on the order of several (or more) hundred dollars along with a Basic Termination Charge. > the 'common-equipment' which had previously been located in the > central office, renting for $50 per month started showing up in the > basement of apartment buildings ... at somewhere around $2000. Sorry, but that sounds like a much better deal. > The service functions the same as the old Enterphone ... there is > no longer a charge for each apartment line. Nor is there a charge > for the lobby phone or the circuit and relay to open the front door, > since these things now belong to the apartment building itself. As it should be. Let the telcos concentrate on providing better interconnection between me and the world. I'll handle the front door, thank you. Keep up the good work, Judge! [Moderator's Note: I must agree with you I think the sytem works much better as CPE than it did under the old arrangement, although the old arrangement was better for a small landlord who could not afford the initial cash outlay. IBT allowed the installation costs for Enterphone to be spread over twelve months if desired. PAT]