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From: ms6b+@andrew.cmu.edu (Marvin Sirbu)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Phone Frustration
Message-ID: <2377@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 22 Dec 89 06:30:43 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 9, Issue 590, message 1 of 4

>[Moderator's Note: Will, thanks for sending this over to us. One of
>the sad facts of post-divestiture phone service is that the consumer
>is the last person to be considered. Unheard of -- indeed, almost
>unthinkable -- problems with phone service prior to divestiture, of
>the sort enumerated here, and lots more, became commonplace once the
>judge signed off on the most tragic, and misguided legal decision in
>American history.  Instead of merely giving equal-opportunity to all
>new comers (and how could the Bill McGowans of the world survive in a
>scenario like that?)  they had to bust up a century's worth of
>finely-tuned procedures and practices due to the anti-AT&T bias so
>prevalent in the court.  PT]

The moderator's views about the divestiture are well known, but the
problems enumerated in Will's message can hardly be blamed on
divestiture.

   o "... a dark stormy night, a desperate woman, a telephone from Kafka".
     Using a pay phone at a service station along the highway, she
     dialed 0 then the number and the phone went dead. She tried again
     and again. She finally reached an operator and found out that (a)
     the phone was owned by a private company (not AT&T), (b) collect
     calls could not be made, and (c) she could not be connected with
     an AT&T operator.

Customer Owned Coin Operated Telephones became possible as a result of
the FCC's Carterfone decision (1968) authorizing customers to attach
any sort of device to their phone line, coupled with the decision
eliminating AT&T's ban on resale I expect the problem was solved
through the use of a call trace capability by the local phone company
just as it would have been had AT&T been integrated (1980)--both
preceding divestiture..  Thus, even without the breakup, we would have
been likely to see this scenario.  Indeed, it is a common one in
France where COCOT's have been authorized for decades and the
telephone company is still a monopoly.

   o Another woman received hourly calls with the recorded message
     "The maximum dollar amount is exceeded by the number 4-4-4-4-4-4."
     The problem was traced to a pay phone at a local gas station with
     a full coin box. The phone was programmed to call someone when the
     coin box was full. Unfortunately, it was programmed with the wrong
     number.

Again, this problem has nothing to do with divestiture, but could
happen with any sort of autodial customer equipment -- even equipment
which was forced to operate through the old Bell Protective Access
Arrangement which made modems so expensive for us computer users.
Even if we went back to the pre-Carterfone days when all autodialers
had to be leased from AT&T, it wouldn't prevent a customer from
programming a wrong number. I expect the problem was solved thorugh
the use of a call trace capability by the local phone company just as
it would have been had AT&T been integrated.

   o For six months a woman had long distance calls to Mexico City
     on her bill. The phone company finally discovered that the woman's
     line was cross wired with a neighbor's line. The twist in the
     story was that the neighbor had recently moved into the house and
     did not realize it had TWO lines (the phone company had failed to
     disconnect the second line when the previous owner moved out).
     The neighbor's bill looked normal since most of his calls were on
     his primary line. Only when he used a secondary phone were the
     calls billed elsewhere.

There's nothing in this story to suggest that divestiture had anything
to do with the problem -- unless you want to argue that the old AT&T
never got customer's wires crossed!

   o One family had phones that rang three times then stopped.
     Friends said they called and let the phone ring 20 times
     and no one answered. "After extensive investigation [GTE]
     found an electronic glitch at a nearby central office."

This story doesn't even involve AT&T, and can thus hardly be blamed on
Judge Greene.  Indeed, one postive consequence of divestiture is that
the equipment market has become more competitive, leading GTE to throw
in the towel and merge its switch operations with AT&T.  This will
likely prove quite beneficial in the long run to GTE customers.

In short, the moderator should spare us his non sequiters about Judge
Greene.


Marvin Sirbu
Carnegie Mellon University