Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!mailrus!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request From: john@zygot.ati.com (John Higdon) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Centrex, Everyone? Message-ID: <3560@accuvax.nwu.edu> Date: 5 Feb 90 05:20:13 GMT Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu Reply-To: John Higdon Organization: Green Hills and Cows Lines: 77 Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 79, message 3 of 7 Last Sunday, during a Superbowl party, one of the many Pac*Bell Centrex commercials appeared on the screen. One of those present proclaimed, "I would never buy a PBX. Centrex is the ONLY way to go." The guy was so forceful and opinionated that is became obvious that the Pac*Bell spots are obviously hitting their mark. This fellow, however, revealed a little telephonic naivety with his pronouncement. The fact is Centrex is rarely a good idea for anyone. Unlike a PBX, Centrex does not offer "user friendly" feature phones; those with soft keys, visual confirmation, and multiple lines. Display phones are not available with Centrex. Just the simple (for a PBX) feature of having the callers name appear in the display would require some permutation of Caller-ID through the CO! How do you access features on Centrex? You flash the hookswitch, dial the code, hope it works. There is no visual confirmation. Music on Hold? No problem. Just send the program of your choice back to the CO on a pair (which you pay for) and they will handle it. Need to add a phone? Just place your order and they will do it on their schedule, as is the case with any configuration change. Most PBXs allow the customer to go to a terminal and type in his own configuration change. Adding a phone is usually no more complex than plugging in an instrument and typing in the change to the switch. The only customer that could logically benefit from Centrex is one that has a clear and pressing need to transfer outside callers from one office location to another. With short-haul microwave, the inexpensiveness of T1 and other technology, this is becoming easier and cheaper to do with multi-node PBXs. Centrex is an outside plant hog. It soaks up massive amounts of cable pairs and is conceptually inefficient. Ah, but with Centrex you don't have to invest in equipment, right? Well let's put it this way: you spend as much or more in installation and service charges as if you were buying or leasing equipment, but you have nothing to show for it, except for possibly a "termination clause". A termination clause provides that if you, for any reason, discontinue your Centrex service before a certain amount of time has elapsed, you are liable for some specified amount of money. And unlike having equipment which you could sell, there is no way to avoid paying those "termination charges" without being sued. Add to this the fact that Centrex customers are served out of the same equipment that provides regulated, monopoly dialtone to us, the unwashed masses. When I call 611 these days, I am tempted to begin by saying, "I realize that I am not a priority Centrex customer...". They must be making a killing on Centrex to be able to afford all that high-priced advertising. Or it's coming out of our ratepayer pockets. John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 723 1395 john@zygot.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o ! [Moderator's Note: Unlike Mr. Higdon, I *love* Centrex. Pure and simple. I have it on my home phones. I used to have a PBX and would not go back. The PBX only cost me about a thousand dollars (in 1981), but I can get a lot of centrex rental for that. And, Mr. Higdon is wrong about making configuration changes. Illinois Bell has a service called 'Centrex-Mate' which allows subscribers to reconfigure their own lines; in effect act as their own service reps. The changes take effect within a few hours, although there is a charge for making them. They also have a system for large centrex accounts where they don't literally run a thousand pairs if the subscriber has a thousand extensions. They run maybe two hundred pairs, and use a few pairs as control lines. Those, plus a relatively small (much smaller than a PBX serving that many lines) gizmo at the subscriber's premises handle everything. The control pair zips ahead of the call with a message for the gizmo saying 'the call arriving on pair 96 is really someone who dialed extension 2037' or similar. Likewise the gizmo takes outgoing calls, finds a pair, and on the control line tells the CO 'the call I am giving you on pair 127 came from extension 2481. Very clever and effecient. While CPE is fine for some people, centrex is great for the rest of us. PT]