Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id FAA16348; Wed, 15 Jan 1997 05:24:53 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 15 Jan 1997 05:24:53 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Message-Id: <199701151024.FAA16348@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #13 TELECOM Digest Wed, 15 Jan 97 05:24:00 EST Volume 17 : Issue 13 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Can a Telco Selectively Refuse Service? (Chris Ziomkowski) Re: Codec in 96 Port SLIC (oldbear@arctos.com) Re: ISPs vs RBOCs: Are the Battle Lines Being Drawn? (Alan Sanderson) Re: ISPs vs RBOCs: Are the Battle Lines Being Drawn? (Stephen Satchell) Re: ISPs vs RBOCs: Are the Battle Lines Being Drawn? (oldbear@arctos.com) Re: ISPs vs RBOCs: Are the Battle Lines Being Drawn? (J.P. White) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu * The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax or phone at: Post Office Box 4621 Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 847-329-0571 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at mirror.lcs.mit.edu. The URL is: http://mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to tel-archives@mirror.lcs.mit.edu to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Chris Ziomkowski Subject: Can a Telco Selectively Refuse Service? Date: Wed, 15 Jan 1997 00:39:08 -0800 Organization: Summit Computing/Big Bear Online I live in a rural community in the mountains of Southern California. For three years I have been after our local telco for ISDN, who has continually told me they don't offer it in this area. (They used to be Contel, however recently they merged and became GTE.) Suddenly, we were chosen as the site for the 1997 winter X Games, and ESPN requested ISDN service in the area. After speaking with a GTE engineer, I was informed that yes, they are in fact installing ISDN for ESPN, but that they had to take heroic efforts by pulling it on a T1 from an office 20 miles away, and that it wasn't available to the general public. My question is, can they do this? I've been after them for years, and my requests have fallen on deaf ears. Yet ESPN comes in and requests ISDN for only two weeks and suddenly GTE bends over backwards to supply them! Worse yet, I have a three month backlog of problems with my current telephone service, and I keep getting the cold shoulder because ALL of their engineers are committed to installing lines for ESPN! I live in this community year in and year out and get treated like dirt, yet they come in and for only two weeks worth of income GTE treats them like kings??? I admit I'm a little bit frustrated by the whole situation, but I thought the whole point of a public tariff was to make sure everyone got treated equally. Now that they have proven they can offer ISDN in this area, can they legally tell me they won't give it to me? Should I call the PUC and start an investigation, or am I getting involved in things I really don't understand? Thanks in advance, Chris Ziomkowski Software Consultant czim@summit.bigbear.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: To answer your question based merely on the title of your article, the answer is NO ... telco may not be selective or biased or prejudicial in offering its services. Telco is required by law to provide its services to all qualified appli- cants. A 'qualified' applicant is one who has demonstrated his/her ability and willingness to pay for the service requested. A 'quali- fied' applicant is further an applicant who has agreed to be bound by the provisions of the tariff(s) telco has filed and to cause no harm or degradation to the network facilities, etc. So far so good. Did GTE file a tariff making ISDN available to ESPN for two weeks? Probably so, just like Ameritech filed a tariff to install and maintain service for all the Democrats when they invaded our town last summer for one week and as a result no one else could get installation or repair in any sort of timely way for a couple months before and after ... But tariffs come in various ways. If GTE filed a general purpose tariff making ISDN available, then they cannot deny the service to you, assuming you are not a deadbeat, a convicted phreak, or someone else they are allowed to deal with 'differently' than most customers. If they filed a special, one-time tariff covering the special circum- stances of the events taking place, then they can rightfully claim you are not part of the specialized group being served under the circumstances. You are not, if you please, similarly situated to ESPN. A good example would be if ESPN and CNN were both going to be there and GTE sold the service to ESPN but refused to provide it to the similarly situated CNN. Before you make a complaint, you might want to see just exactly how GTE worded things in the tariff. Is it a rotten deal when telco bends over backwards to accomodate some large, pushy corporate customer or a bunch of bigshot poli- ticians as happened here last summer? Yeah it is, but telco knows where to suck up and how to do it best. Take for instance the Democrats; in 1968 when they last 'favored' us here with their convention including riots by the police and demonstrators, fires, looting, etc, they split town after the convention leaving an unpaid bill to Illinois Bell (Ameritech's predecessor) of over a million dollars. IBT tried for about three years to collect it from the Democratic National Committee or whatever their name is/was, and finally wound up writing it off. Try that with your phone bill. See if it even gets close to a million dollars before that man with the nasal-sounding voice calls you on the phone as he does me when my bill gets a month or so overdue for a hundred dollars and tells me, "Townson? ... I will give you until five pm to get over to the payment agency and drop off the money; otherwise I am going to cut you ..." The Democrats stiff them for a million dollars yet this past summer Ameritech is busy sucking and slurping and making obscene noises in their haste to placate the politicians; to heck with the twenty dollar per month year-after-year regular customers. Yeah, life is rotten and unfair at times. Check to see exactly how GTE is handling it legally (that is, in the tariff). I'll bet they have it covered as they want it. PAT] ------------------------------ From: oldbear@arctos.com (The Old Bear) Subject: Re: Codec in 96 Port SLIC Date: Tue, 14 Jan 1997 23:32:16 -0500 Davew@cris.com (Dave Harrison) writes: > A friend of mine in Grand Junction, CO., (under)served by USWest, just > moved to a building served by fiber and 96 port (?) SLIC's. > I think I once read a dicussion in this group dealing with the > limitation of the Codec in the SLIC line cards that limit data > transmission, which may explain why he can't get connect rates higher > than about 21.6k. > The solution was to have the telco replace the line cards with ones > sporting a different codec. > Of course, USWest just says "duh" and has no clue. Any help or advice > or perhaps even an incantation or two would be greatly appreciated! From my archives: -------------------begin included text---------- Date: 6 Aug 1996 22:18:31 GMT From: stephen@clark.net (Stephen Balbach) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: AT&T SLC96 Cabinets and 28.8 Modems Telecom-Digest: Volume 16, Issue 385 As promised here is the information on which card works in SLC's for 28.8 or greater connections. This is from an ISP in Bell South territory who said that by using this card they are able to achieve 28.8 or greater connections on a SLC96. "What they did to our SLC to make it work is replace all AT&T cards that originally served lines with the lines, with PulseCom AUA178i cards, these are revision B1, issue 2 (According to the guy that installed them, the revision level mattered)." Good luck! We are pursuing Bell Atlantic to try a card as a test case - I would be very interested in how others fare. As a matter of alternative views, here is an email I recieved on SLC's and how the search for the right card is a search for the Holy Grail. Perhaps he did not try PulseCom AUA178i revision B1 issue 2 ------------------ Greetings, I read with interest of your account of problems with AT&T SLC equipment. The fabled magic card that solves all of the problems. I've heard THAT one before ... and I have seen three such cards produce no better results than the stock cards. There is a reason. The SLC units are not what they seem. You look at one, and you think it is a channel bank breaking out a digital signal, and providing standard channel bank functions. But that is not what it is (at least not what Southwestern Bell uses). The AT&T SLC unit is a device to take analog signals, fold them together onto a digital pathway, and fan them back out on the other side. What is the difference? Big difference ... both the in and the out are analog. So why am I telling you this? Because there is a perception that the problem is a bandwidth issue, and it isn't, exactly. The problem is what is called "PCM quantization noise". PCM q-noise is the slight distortion caused when an analog signal is digitized. Every point in a connection where there is a conversion between analog and PCM (pulse coded modulation) a slight amount of this noise is generated. This noise is most noticable as phase jitter. Phase jitter is not usually audible, but it wrecks havoc on modem signals on the higher density trelis coding methods, such as 28k modems use. The modem industry adapted a test suite that included up to 3 PCM conversions in the tests, to go slightly beyond the standard 2 PCM conversions they thought would be standard in the modern digital phone system. In their worst case enviroment with 3 PCM conversons, the 28k modems were to connect at 28k 80% of the time to pass the test. This is where the SLC gets ugly. In the /real/ world of today, your signal goes into the SLC where it is digitized (thats 1 PCM converson) then it is pulled off the SLC into a break-out where it is analog again. (two PCM conversions). Then across the room to the box that re-digitizes the signal for it's entry to the network. (3 PCM conversions, and we are only half way) The signal then comes out of the other side of the network exactly as it went in (assuming no digital path errors) where it is converted back to analog (4 PCM conversions!). The analog signal then hops onto the SLC where it is turned digital (5 PCM Conversions) then delievered to your neighborhood where it is given one final conversion before exiting onto real copper. (6 PCM conversions) The advantage of the SLC is that in the telco office, crews using ordinary analog test sets can interact with the same methods and techniques that they have used for the past 70 years of copper wire service. The SLC is a copper plant simulator designed to avoid personell re-training. It has the "feel" of copper to service people, so they need little training to debug it. The disadvantage is that a typical circuit path includes 6 PCM conversions. This exceeds the standards for "worst case" PCM q-noise by a factor of two, according to the modem industry. AT&T votes on modem standards, but they are such a big company that the modem engineers have no idea what the telephony engineers are designing. Their engineers all have their heads in the sand while they are designing tomorrows technology. AT&T invented the modem, and they are inventing new ways to make them not work. If you find this fabled card and it works, please tell me about it. If I find it, I'll tell the world. However as long as they are doing standard PCM, no bandwidth increase is going to alter the fact you have six levels of PCM conversion and the resulting noise. PCM q-noise is not caused by imperfect hardware, or poor quality conversion ... it is the slight distortion caused by the math of the conversion. Because the conversion is being done over and over, this particular noise element is greatly magnified as compared to other noise elements. There is no "new math" that can be used to reduce q-noise. It is possible to use different formulas to change the impact of q-noise, however because of the way the modem signal is modulated, it would be easier to demodulate it than to come up with enough math ot encode the analog signal. The only way to improve the PCM performance is to widen the digital pathway. The problem with this is that it steps outside of the 8-bit/24-channel/8khz standard, which is something you might find AT&T reluctant to do. However since PCM q-noise is not really a problem for voice calls, there is no equipment to test for it or analyze it. It is a feature of the technology, and nothing more. I saw the head of Southwestern Bell Compliance testing for all of Texas come out with his best engineers. They had not even heard of PCM q-noise, and had no equipment to measure it. I showed them the blue CCITT standards book, and they scoffed, saying that they cannot be held to standards of the modem industry. Of course they tell me about the "card to solve all problems" fairy-tail. I remind them that they have tried three such cards, and telling me to wait for another isn't going to wash. Supposedly this month another card is coming in, and this is supposed to be /the/ solution. But I've heard that before. I have been asking them to use the fiber for real T1's, and to use real channel banks to break it out. This will reduce the PCM hops by 2, leaving me with 4 PCM conversions as a worst case. However for people not on a SLC, we will be only 2 PCM hops away, and 28k (or 33k) will be possible. An interesting note, real channel banks take up less room at the central office, and about the same amount of space in the field as the SLC equipment. The big difference is that the channel bank will cost about 1/2 of what the SLC cost ... and the techs will need to be trained to administer the equipment. Since they won't do this, the only remaining answer is to convert to ISDN and use digital modems. This skips the whole PCM saga up to the central office, making your worst case only 3 PCM hops, as the standard sets as capable of supporting 28k 80% of the time. Of course ISDN has it's own problems ... --------------------- Stephen Balbach "Driving the Internet To Work" VP, ClarkNet due to the high volume of mail I receive please quote info@clark.net the full original message in your reply. Date: Thu, 08 Aug 1996 10:47:54 GMT From: bubba@insync.net (Bill Garfield) Subject: Re: AT&T SLC96 Cabinets and 28.8 Modems Organization: Associated Technical Consultants Telecom-Digest: Volume 16, Issue 393 stephen@clark.net (Stephen Balbach) wrote: > I had posted earlier about a known problem with AT&T SLC96 fiber > cabinets and achieving full 28.8 (or 33.6) modem connections due to > bandwidth constraints in the SLC96. SLC96 cabinets are widely deployed > througout the USA in all seven RBOCS and are one of the culprits of bad > modem connections in the PSTN. Bell Atlantic told us and many other > ISP's in the Balt/DC region that the problem is unsolvable and the > only solution is ISDN. The cards that break out the OC-3 into DS0's > fall-off at about 3400Hz thus limiting the throughput at best to 26.4 > (28.8 needs about 3800Hz) -- the PSTN can theoreticlaly achive a > maximum of 4000Hz which copper can do, but the cards in SLC96's can > only do about 3400Hz. [snip] Hasn't this horse been whipped before? I've pursued this myself and determined much to my own satisfaction that "the problem" lies not within the SLC96, but rather with the method of termination at the serving office (CO Terminal end). Much to my absolute horror I discovered about a year ago that common practice is to interface the COT end to the (digital) switching machine via back-to-back channel banks with a wire frame inbetween. Argghh! In some cases this was a carryover from a switch upgrade from the analog days, where the SLC originally had its COT side terminated into a wire frame before hitting the machine. Then along comes the new digital switcher and the wire frame remains and/or worse, a D4 bank is added to bring the service into the machine digitally. Why? If the serving office is a digital machine, request, nee insist on 'full digital integration' on the CO end and quite miraculously your "28.8 modem issues" will be solved. This is also true when the CPE is one of the new "digital" modem bays such as USRobotic's upscale Enterprise Network Hub. This unit accepts up to two T1s directly, providing a direct digital interface to up to 48 modems per shelf. Alas, when the CO side has a D4 channel bank sitting ahead of the switch, the bandwidth and high-end frequency response will suffer, as will the signal:noise ratio. By removing the D4 bank and terminating directly into a digital shelf, modem performance literally springs to life. Here's what the differences look like, first w/back-to-back D4 equipment on the C.O. end, to wit: | -22 - - - - - - - - - - - _ _ _ _ _ _ 0 | -24 - _ 2 | -26 - _ 4 | -28 6 | -30 8 | -32 - 10 | -34 12 | -36 14 | -38 _ 16 | -40 18 | -42 20 | -44 N N 22 | -46 O O 24 | -48 * MODEM RECEIVER THRESHOLD* * * * * * * * * * *N*N* 26 | -50 E E 28 | -52 30 |Level =================================================== Atten | 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 3 3 3 3 3 3 | 1 3 4 6 7 9 0 2 3 5 6 8 9 1 2 4 5 7 8 0 1 3 4 6 7 | 5 0 5 0 5 0 5 0 5 0 5 0 5 0 5 0 5 0 5 0 5 0 5 0 5 | 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Here we see fairly good levels out to 3400 hz, where the bandpass suddenly nosedives into the dirt. This circuit will provide V.34 modem performance up to maybe 26.4k bps, but surely nothing higher. By contrast, look now at the same customer's response curve after the C.O. side was given full digital integration: | -18 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ | -20 _ - - _ 1 | -22 - 3 | -24 _ 5 | -26 7 | -28 _ 9 | -30 11 | -32 13 | -34 15 | -36 - 17 |Level =================================================== Atten | 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 3 3 3 3 3 3 | 1 3 4 6 7 9 0 2 3 5 6 8 9 1 2 4 5 7 8 0 1 3 4 6 7 | 5 0 5 0 5 0 5 0 5 0 5 0 5 0 5 0 5 0 5 0 5 0 5 0 5 | 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Here we still see the high end rolloff, though it's not nearly as steep and there is measurable energy well above the modem's receive threshold, all the way out to 3750 Hz. This circuit will support not only 28.8, but even modem speeds as high as 33.6k bps. Putting in ISDN may in fact be less hassle and less of a fight with "the phone company" as many of them are quick to spout the company "line" about only guaranteeing 300 - 3000 Hz and "2400 baud". ------------------------ Date: 8 Aug 1996 17:42:54 GMT From: exudpau@exu.ericsson.se (David B. Paul) Subject: Re: AT&T SLC96 Cabinets and 28.8 Modems Organization: Ericsson North America Inc. Telecom-Digest: Volume 16, Issue 395 exudpau@exu.ericsson.se (David B. Paul) writes: > But if the SLC-96 (or clone thereof) operates in an IDLC (that is, > INTEGRATED digital loop carrier) configuration, in which the DS1's > coming from the SLC-96 plug directly into the exchange, then only the > "in" is analog, and so the SLC-96 introduces only one source of > quantization noise, not two. But then Robert P. Vietzke wrote: > Newer "integrated SLC's" actually extend the "coder/decoder" that > converts analog to digital and back to the SLC itself, essentially > extending the digital fabric of the switch to the SLC site. These should > provide -improved- capability, not reduced. I've recently seen a new Yes, I was mistaken. Assuming the exchange is digital, a SLC-96 that is "integrated" does not introduce *any* additional A/D conversions. David -----------end included text----------- Hope this helps. Cheers, Will The Old Bear ------------------------------ From: Alan Sanderson 408 447-3859 Subject: Re: ISPs vs RBOCs: Are the Battle Lines Being Drawn? Date: Tue, 14 Jan 1997 11:53:48 -0800 Organization: HP Americas Integration Center Reply-To: Alan_Sanderson@hp.com John R Levine wrote: >> Facts are facts and there is no factual counter argument to what the >> telco's are saying as far as length of computer telephone calls to >> BBSs and ISPs v. voice telephone calls. Computer telephone calls to >> BBSs and ISPs are much longer [a few hours] than voice telephone calls >> [a few minutes] on average. > Remember price caps? The theory was that the PUC set prices, the > telco got to keep the difference if they could cut their costs. But > wait, what if the telcos guessed wrong and the costs don't go down? > Well, in that case the telcos go back whining to the PUCs with stories > ranging from numerically implausible to outright lies*, while at the > same time running advertising campaigns to encourage people to sign > up for second lines for modems. > If the telcos ever presented numbers for modem use that were on the > same planet as financial reality, they'd get a lot more sympathy here. > As it is, they're only accelerating the day when everyone other than > the little old lady POTS customers will run away to bypass and CAPs > who act like they actually want the business. Being a PacTel customer, I have had problems accessing ISP lines, receiving not only busy signals, but the SIT tone/"All Circuits are Busy" recordings. When I contacted PacTel repair service, they pointed the finger at Teleport. I contacted Teleport, and they reported that PacTel had some inter-switch trunking problems that they had been working on for about a week. It appears that the priority to provide working trunks to modem banks is not very high at PacTel. This approach to service tends to hype the call non-completion stats, allowing them to poor-mouth their way to the PUC and the bank. The use of modems and Fax machines in the Silicon Valley should come as no surprise to PacTel. Neither should the traffic pattern growth, or the employment growth, 99%+ housing occupancy rate, and line count growth. In most cases where more than one line is installed in a residence, it is likely that the second line is used for a FAX (similar calling pattern to voice), a computer modem, or a teenager (a similar calling pattern to computer modem usage). Alan Sanderson ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 14 Jan 1997 23:52:27 -0800 From: satchell@accutek.com (Stephen Satchell) Subject: Re: ISPs vs RBOCs: Are the Battle Lines Being Drawn? Organization: Satchell Evaluations In article , lvc@lucent.com wrote: > I'm not going to be very popular with my reply. > Facts are facts and there is no factual counter argument to what the > telco's are saying as far as length of computer telephone calls to > BBSs and ISPs v. voice telephone calls. Computer telephone calls to > BBSs and ISPs are much longer [a few hours] than voice telephone calls > [a few minutes] on average. Which is why I proposed a method using existing technology to implement a shared leased-line Internet carriage service for residences. I've presented my proposal to the Nevada Public Service Commission, and need to find out where to go from here. Details are available on my web page at I'm all for getting data off the telco networks, particularly when it's Internet traffic we're talking about ... Stephen Satchell, Satchell Evaluations http://www.accutek.com/~satchell ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 14 Jan 1997 23:47:32 -0500 From: The Old Bear Subject: Re: ISPs vs RBOCs: Are the Battle Lines Being Drawn? lvc@lucent.com (Lawrence V. Cipriani) writes: > I'm not going to be very popular with my reply. Yes, but you are pretty much correct and on target. > Facts are facts and there is no factual counter argument to what the > telco's are saying as far as length of computer telephone calls to > BBSs and ISPs v. voice telephone calls. Computer telephone calls to > BBSs and ISPs are much longer [a few hours] than voice telephone calls > [a few minutes] on average. > However, being public utilities, you could argue they should respond > to the changing needs of the public. And as usual, they are going to > want of money to upgrade their systems to handle this traffic pattern. There is a little more to it than just adding capacity, as you note below. And keep in mind that those additional lines being used for "nailed up" low-speed data circuits are also producing $180-$400 per year of revenue on each end. > However, the FCC and public utilities commissions should ask > themselves, and you [very pointedly] why people who don't even own > computers [like my parents] should bear the cost of upgrading the > phone system with higher rates for someone elses [dubious] benefit? That is the classic cross-subsidization question, just restated for the nineties. One might argue that having a readily accessible low-speeed consumer data network is almost as important as having a voice network. Then again, one might not. > In my opinion, if you want to tie up the phone system with long > duration phone calls to BBSs or ISPs then you should pay for it. Sure. But how much? > This doesn't mean I think the telcos should have a license to rip you > off and charge a lot more money than necessary to accomplish this. > They can park a box between their switches and subscriber lines that > listens to incoming touch tones. If the call is going to a known > ISP/BBS then the call can be routed through a separate data network to > that ISP/BBS and there is no need to even go through the central > office switch. This is already a product, and described in the 1/97 > issue of {Computer Telephony} magazine, I believe it's made by Rockwell. Absolutely! I have been arguing for a couple of years that the key is to get these "nailed-up" data paths off of the switched network. The irony is that, because the switched network is well amortized, the creation of a new network level with new hardware yields a pricing structure which is difficult to compete with unmeasured POTS. To borrow the comments of a well-known stand-up comic: Ever notice how companies have started charging for things they're *not* giving you? Why does it cost more for products without added artificial ingredients, without fat, without sugar, without calories, etc? -- One may well ask, why should it cost more for telecom services without switching? > Personally, I'm in favor of eliminating all telephone monopolies and > letting the marketplace, not bureaucrats in companies or government, > decide how to price access to telephone networks. In a free market > pricing would probably be strictly usage sensitive, but then a lot of > people would still be complaining they can't get the Internet for > $19.95/month not matter how much time they are on the phone. Gee, too > bad. Actually, as there become more alternatives to the telco's plant (notable cable TV and fiber networks being constructed by other utility companies), there is no reason not to expect prices to drop. A few years back, I thought the idea of the cable companies offering phone service was nuts -- they had no experience in switching. And, once the telcos had fiber to everyone's doorstep, the cable companies would be history. Needless to say, I have changed my mind entirely. The telcos have so badly botched the roll-out of ISDN, which might have been their bridge to the future, that I have all but given up hope for their devising any solution to their long-term problem in a world where switched voice is becoming a smaller and smaller piece of the telecommunications/telemedia industry. The telcos seem unable to get away from "usage sensitive" pricing and move toward "value added" pricing. And, unless they make this transition, I fear they will be left in the dust with the remnants of their "usage sensitive" POTS. As noted in the original posting, the telcos seem to be intent upon creating a price umbrella for new entrants rather than erecting a barrier to entry based upon service availability and price. And whenever a telco person is asked about this, the answer always boils down to "regulatory" issues -- but I have not seen a bunch of rejected telco tariff filings which were turned down by PUCs for predatory pricing -- only rejections of proposed resale rates to new entrant LECs, etc. I do not want to trivialize the situation in which the telcos find themselves. It is indeed a marketing and pricing dilemma. However, the total lack of vision and creativity exhibited is rivaled only by the final days of Western Union ... a company which dominated character-based datacom technology and completely missed the sea-change being brought about by the computer revolution. Again, thanks for your intelligent and intelligible response! Cheers, The Old Bear [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You mention the final days of Western Union, and for awhile now I have wondered if the same kind of ending is in store for AT&T perhaps a decade or two decades from now? No one ever imagined WUTCO would come to such an unglorious end, just a bankrupt shell of its former self. In the 1950-60's it would have been unthinkable. And it is still pretty unthinkable about AT&T today isn't it ... yet the similarities are striking in many ways. We see AT&T going out in all sorts of directions, missing the boat completely in so many of its endeavors, bungling up things badly in other areas. They started their ISP, but then WUTCO started Easy Link .. remember that one? Time will tell. Anyone agree with me on this? PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 14 Jan 1997 16:58:12 -0800 From: J.P. White Reply-To: ffv.aerotech@ffvaerotech.com Organization: FFV Aerotech Subject: Re: ISPs vs RBOCs: Are the Battle Lines Being Drawn? Shawn Barnhart wrote:- > I have a suspicion that management at RBOCs have been asleep at the > wheel and have not been doing much proactive planning in their core > business. They've all been real interested in cable TV (and content for > it) and other things NOT part of providing telephone service. Suddenly > they may have a capacity problem and they want someone else to pay the > price. I don't think that I should have to pay the price -- I think the > stockholders should. They're responsible for RBOC management, and RBOC > management is the source of this problem. Another possibility to consider is that with all the deregulation of the RBOC monopolies which has been building to climax over the last year or so, the RBOC's have probably been very nervous about the future and investing large sums of money to increase their network. At the same time as this, the internet has increased demand for lines and changed calling patterns in the suburbs. They've been caught with their pants down. Here in Nashville, Bellsouth is under fire because of an epidemic of 'all circuit busy' recordings. They have blamed the internet as the root cause to this problem. I suspect they have underestimated demand AND grown the network conservativly, and by blaming the internet they can attempt to justify the introduction of per minute charges against the ISP's to receive a call, making independant ISP's pass the cost onto consumers. The RBOC's offer internet access, and any such charge would be an internal paper money transfer to them, therefore enabling them a competitive advantage and the creation of yet another opportunity for them to monopolize. I don't see the RBOC's giving up their monopolies willingly, and will try to strengthen them at any opportunity. I very much doubt they are asleep at the wheel as you suggest. JP White Manager Information Systems FFV Aerotech Inc., Mail to : ffv.aerotech@ffvaerotech.com Web : http://www.ffvaerotech.com ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #13 *****************************