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From: AWalker@RED.RUTGERS.EDU (*Hobbit*)
Newsgroups: mod.telecom
Subject: Equal access and the customer
Message-ID: <8601270816.AA09298@ucbvax.berkeley.edu>
Date: Sat, 25-Jan-86 21:09:21 EST
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.8601270816.AA09298
Posted: Sat Jan 25 21:09:21 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 27-Jan-86 07:57:28 EST
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Approved: telecom@xx.lcs.mit.edu

It is becoming increasingly clear to me that the local operating companies
[at least here in Bell Atlantic territory] are attempting to *suppress*
knowledge of 10XXX-format dialing capability.  [This, oddly enough, is 
called "Tenex dialing" by the biz office people ... are they going to have
twenex dialing someday?]  The point is, half the employees don't know what
no-pick is or how 10XXX really works.  A lot of them will tell you that you
need to sign up with the carrier before you can successfully use a different
carrier than your default 1+ one.  It is *company policy* that they cannot 
provide any information about other carriers, specifically what 10XXX carrier
codes are recognized by a given office.  To get this info you have to call 
the Teleconsumer people in DC and get the list for your area, which has
a good possibility of being outdated or inaccurate.  Bell people also don't
deal with 950 at all and will very likely deny all knowledge of its existence.

The point is that the general public is being in effect lied to, and not 
given the information they want about how divestiture is affecting their 
service.  This angers me and I am trying to educate as many people as I can
reach about equal access and how it works.  They are always amazed to learn
that they can dial a call through an alternate carrier without having an
account with them first.

Why is this suppresssion being done?  Because the billing arrangements with
the other carriers, i.e. you are what's called a "casual caller" on a carrier
you don't have your own account with, are so hairy and horrendous that making
a call on an alternate seems to introduce a nominal *6* month delay in 
getting the bill to the customer, and there seems to be a large margin for
screwup that may lose the billing completely.  In some areas that recently
went equal access, you walk up to a public phone, dial 10XXX 1 301 4nn qqqq,
and talk to your friend in Maryland for a while for free, because the carrier
had no idea that the calling number was a pay station.  This shows that a lot
of the carriers are still in their Mom-n-Pop stage and can't handle the 
intricacies of getting the bills to the right places.  The LOC's know this
too, and to avoid the chance that people will take advantage of this "legalized
toll fraud", they withhold the information.

Could some of the other readers who have had equal access for a while, and who
have made "casual" calls with different carriers relate their experiences 
with how the billing was handled [if at all] and what kind of charges showed 
up?  I am burningly curious if this lossage exists everywhere, or just around
here in NJ.  My home office is just about to go equal access [although the
Piscataway office that handles Rutgers has had it for a while].  I intend to
place calls and keep careful records of date/time and carrier used, and see
how long it takes them to figure out who I am.  I also urge my colleagues
to do likewise, so the carriers will be *forced* to get their acts together.
Maybe the local operating companies will get a little more reasonable about
the whole thing if they are forced to by the public.

_H*
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