Path: utzoo!telecom-request Date: 21 Jun 91 18:28:46 GMT From: "Fred R. Goldstein" Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: All AOS's Aren't Scum Message-ID: Organization: Digital Equipment Corp., Littleton MA USA Sender: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu 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 476, Message 5 of 8 Lines: 75 In article , jim@equi.com (Jim Allard) writes.: > Since my favorite UNIX afficionado introduced me to the Digest a few > months ago, I have been quietly sitting in the background reading the > various utterings of respondents, as AOSs and COCOTs in general have > been heavily smacked around. While I will agree there are some > unethical providers out there, some of us have made a serious effort > to provide services which attempt to validate the reasons for the MFJ > -- competition. ... Mr. Allard has a disingenuous but ultimately specious defense of his so-called "industry". Beginning with his motherhood and apple pie defense of "competition" (who's disputing that?), he then claims that because his company is doing something apparently in competition with AT&T, he must be good. Hogwash. Speaking as a diehard anti-monopolist who has taken the strong position that "divestiture" was a Good Thing (and disagreeing with the Moderator quite openly, to be sure), I still see no excuse for the AOS/COCOT business to exist. They're bottom-feeding scum whose very existence is no more than an unhappy accident. Fact: Nobody in "power" EVER planned on the COCOT/AOS situation. It was an accident caused by the confluence of several different legal and regulatory events. If it were chemistry, it would be the creature from the Toxic Lagoon, one of those unhappy reactions. Event 1: COCOTs. This was planned. Back in 1977, the FCC Registration program (Part 68) specifically excluded pay phones. At the time, the only pay phones were the CO-controlled kind; mucking with those lines could have caused mis-billing, fraud, etc. No problem. But then somebody invented a new kind of pay phone that ran on a standard line. Was it allowed? The FCC recognized the rationale behind the original pay phone exemption and allowed registation of the COCOT. That was purely a technical issue. Event 2: Resale. This was planned. Back in the '70s, the FCC allowed resale carriers to operate under license; later, the license requirement was dropped. Anybody could resell anything. At any price. This was fine; the telco still got the money from the original supplier and if somebody chose to buy from a reseller, that's their business. This has recently begun in Canada, btw. Reselling is a cheap way to pretend to be an LD carrier. Event 3: Divestiture. This caused the LECs (RBOCs et al) to adopt an arms-length relationship from LD carriers. So they had to accept billing requests from any and all LD comers, if they were to continue to bill for AT&T. Now with anybody allowed to put anything on a phone bill, bottom feeders moved in. They got aggregators and COCOTs to force calls throgh themselves. They charged outrageous, unregulated rates. They gave lousy service. But it was all legal, since reselling was allowed and resellers were, like carriers, allowed to buy LEC billing services. Maybe, just maybe, Mr. Allard's company does't overcharge the way 99.44% of AOSs do. But when I travel on business with my AT&T SDN card, I don't expect to have to pay out of pocket to the hotel what normally gets direct-billed via our Tariff 12 agreement. I don't want to have to argue with the poor underpaid sweatshop operators about my right to be connected to AT&T (though I often do, and I NEVER let the AOS get my money). If we had a responsible FCC that required resellers to file arguable tariffs, and required phones to offer the actual callers a choice of carrier, that's fine. But making "captive" callers use some company, that exists only because of loopholes in the law, is not going to win my sympathy. Fred R. Goldstein Digital Equipment Corp., Littleton MA goldstein@delni.enet.dec.com voice: +1 508 952 3274