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Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!vortex!lauren
From: lauren@vortex.UUCP (Lauren Weinstein)
Newsgroups: net.dcom
Subject: Re: long distance carriers
Message-ID: <652@vortex.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 5-May-85 16:45:29 EDT
Article-I.D.: vortex.652
Posted: Sun May  5 16:45:29 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 7-May-85 21:09:02 EDT
References: <1138@ecsvax.UUCP>
Organization: Vortex Technology, Los Angeles
Lines: 27

By the way, when a company claims they will be switching to
answering-based billing "under equal access," this means after
equal access goes in ON THE DESTINATION END OF THE CALL.  Whether
or not you have equal access on the originating end of the
call is unrelated to the issue.  Since many, many communities will
never be equal access (only communities over a certain size will
necessarily be covered) even those non-AT&T carriers who
WANT to bill "properly" may not be doing so to many areas.  Also,
those same companies are only starting the process of setting up 
equipment to process answering supervision data, even when destination 
equal access is already in place.  And as someone else already pointed
out, many of the alternate carriers don't intend to bill via any
means other than timing (no supervision) in any case.  This causes
major problems with automated modem calls, as you might expect.

Regarding the "Data Communications" survey--I've never put
much faith in surveys that only considered a single (or only
a few) paths.  Their survey was between only two points (and major
metro areas at that) so they didn't get hit too badly with one
of the alternate carriers' worst problems--variability of trunk
quality from route to route.

Still, it appears that the general consensus is that the alternates
are risky, to say the least, when it comes to data.  Which is
about the outcome I would expect.

--Lauren--