Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id BAA18851; Wed, 12 Feb 1997 01:08:12 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 01:08:12 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Message-Id: <199702120608.BAA18851@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #39 TELECOM Digest Wed, 12 Feb 97 01:08:00 EST Volume 17 : Issue 39 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Telco Competition in Dallas (Tad Cook) Can You Help? Need Telephony Expert Witnesses in Court (John Marinelli) Indiana Cellular (was re: United States Cellular Answers) (James Bellaire) Compuserve Wins Anti-Spam Lawsuit (Bruce Pennypacker) BellSouth's Lousy Customer Service (ctelesca@ncsu.campus.mci.net) Customer Surveys Indicate BellSouth's Service Nation's Best (Mike King) Last Laugh! Sorry, Wrong Number (800-S0S-APPL) (Shalom Septimus) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. 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Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Telco Competition in Dallas Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 22:13:24 PST From: tad@ssc.com (Tad Cook) Dallas Telephone Market Barely Open to Competition A Year after Law Passed By Jennifer Files, The Dallas Morning News Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News Feb. 10--Last fall, amid the fuss over the new 972 area code in the Dallas area, some frustrated consumers raised deregulation's rallying cry: Watch out, local phone monopoly. Competition is coming, and we'll take our business elsewhere. "At least in January, there will be some new kids on the block," said one consultant who feared her clients wouldn't be able to find her after her number changed. Lots of other people thought so, too. After all, the government said local phone markets would have to be open for at least limited competition by the start of this year. It was the cornerstone of telecommunications reform, a sweeping campaign to change the way U.S. communications companies do business. Eventually, local phone carriers, long-distance companies, and wireless and cable firms would all cross into one another's industries, people were told. The new competition would inspire innovative technology, better service and lower prices results any customer would welcome. But a year after President Clinton signed the law Feb. 8, 1996, only a small fraction of Americans have more than one local telephone company to choose from. In Dallas, a handful of new entrants are installing equipment to handle local calls, but almost all of them are targeting lucrative corporate accounts and ignoring residential customers. Many cable and phone companies are settling back into their familiar niches. And rates have gone up across the board, with increases from 1 percent for local telephone service to 7.8 percent for cable, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Turns out, competition is more complicated to negotiate and more expensive to operate than most regulators thought. But even asking why that's true opens a storm of accusations. AT&T and other big long-distance carriers accuse Southwestern Bell, GTE and other local phone companies of using extreme tactics to protect regional monopolies; local providers fire back that the long-distance companies and other firms that want to provide local service may be exaggerating their troubles in order to stave off long-distance competition in the future. Southwestern Bell says it has removed barriers to local phone competition. "The doors are open today," says Cliff Eason, president and CEO of Southwestern Bell Communications. His competitors debate him on that point, but at least one thing is clear: Few companies have made it inside. Meanwhile, Dallas-area residential customers wonder when competition will come. "You've got all these big companies with their lobbyists that are trying to protect their business while enabling them to poach the other guys' service," says Brad Kozak, who runs a "virtual company" from his East Dallas home via ISDN phone lines. "I understand it from a business standpoint, but it doesn't do me any good." Battle waging ... The ongoing battle to deregulate Texas phone companies started at the state level, was partly taken over by Congress and now is being waged by state and federal regulators and the court system. In the first round, the Texas Legislature was at the center of debate. Deregulation was among the most contentious issues of the 1995 legislative session, involving all kinds of companies that transmit sound, pictures or information, including local and long-distance phone companies, newspapers, consumer groups and cable operators. The Legislature decided to allow companies such as Southwestern Bell to buy the use of long-distance networks and resell the services to consumers, a common practice in the long-distance industry. But it barred big long-distance firms from reselling local service. To compete against Southwestern Bell, long-distance companies would have to spend billions of dollars to lay their own telephone networks. Long-distance companies were incensed. Other states allowed reselling, and none had such extreme requirements, they said. Both AT&T and MCI threatened to stay out of the market altogether. "I think you can just about be guaranteed this bill will chase investment away from Texas," an MCI official said at the time. But federal legislation superseded most provisions of the state law last year, and Congress' version of telecommunications reform looked nothing like Texas law. Under the federal act, Southwestern Bell and other local phone companies may not sell long-distance services until they prove they've opened their local markets to competition. The philosophical difference alone would have exacerbated tensions in Texas, but the rules the Federal Communications Commission published in August for making the reform work dramatically escalated the dispute. States set the prices local phone companies can charge to connect long-distance firms to their networks, but the FCC wrote guidelines for figuring out what those rates should be. Those rates don't take into account the huge costs of building the telephone networks that the new local providers will be using. And thus came the third stage of telecom reform: Led by GTE, local phone companies have sued the FCC and regulators in several states, including Texas, over the rules and the resulting rates. "It would put us in a situation where we're reselling below our costs," says GTE's Tom Hall, regional president for Texas and New Mexico. Repeated appeals and court challenges make it risky for anyone to plan too far ahead, says Rian Wren, AT&T's vice president for local service in the Southwest. AT&T recently started selling local service to some California consumers and to large business customers in 45 states. Because Texas rules would slash its profits, Mr. Wren says, the service isn't available here. Mr. Wren says AT&T intends to roll out consumer and business local service in Texas this summer. By year-end, he says, the company could have "small digits" of market share. "At this point we're starting to commit some real dollars, and yet everything that I'm basing this on is being appealed," he said. MCI would not comment on a date to roll out residential services, but the No. 2 long-distance company said late last week that it will start offering local phone services to businesses this year. And while the residential market is largely still on hold, the business market appears poised to thrive. "If you're a business customer and you're not exploring alternative local carriers you're missing the boat," said Bryan Van Dussen, director of telecommunications research for the Yankee Group, a Boston-based technology research firm. Businesses spend about $24 billion on local services, including access charges paid to connect their calls to a long-distance carrier's network, Mr. Van Dussen said. Business customers are more profitable than residential customers because wiring a network to one building can serve hundreds or thousands of phones. Marketing expenses are lower, and calling volumes and rates are higher, allowing providers to recover costs more easily. The companies vying for that sector include Teleport and Worldcom, both big names in the corporate telecom market that sell private-line and other telephone services to corporate customers. More of an upstart is their Houston-based competitor, American Telco. That company, which primarily provides business long-distance services, was the first Texas company to begin selling its own local switched service to business customers, in Houston in November. American Telco began targeting Dallas customers in January by reselling Southwestern Bell's service and plans to begin using its own equipment within a few months. Business phone competition "is happening very quickly," says Jim Henry, director of Dallas sales and operations for Shared Technologies Fairchild, a publicly traded company that manages phone systems for more than 30 office buildings in Dallas-Fort Worth. Some of the new services could cut his local phone costs by 50 percent. Mr. Henry hopes to switch five buildings to a new provider within 30 days. There is some risk to using a new provider, he notes. "We definitely want to proceed with caution, but the cost savings are in the hundreds of thousands of dollars per year," Mr. Henry said. Some residential customers, however, say savings may not be worth potential technical problems. Deb McAlister wasn't thrilled about Southwestern Bell last week. Working from home as the company's workers were a day late hooking up her new office phone lines, she said, "I guess I'm not the best reference for them these days." But, she added, "The one thing I can say for them ... is: When I pick up the phone, there is a dial tone." "I don't know if I'd switch, but then again, I don't know what I'd be offered." ------------------------------ From: jmarinel@freenet.npiec.on.ca (John Marinelli) Subject: Can You Help? Need Telephony Expert Witnesses in Court Date: 11 Feb 1997 02:55:38 GMT Organization: Niagara Peninsula Industry Education Council Hi! Remember me? Several years ago I had posed the question: Is it physically possible to infiltrate a telephone company's network; remotely manipulate the company's switches; process long distance calling; make it appear as if the calls had originated from a particular location and then subsequently billed to that location ? How so? Well I've finally done it! I go head to head with Bell Canada ... I'm awaiting a trial date as I sit here writing this. The pre-trial magistrate has ordered that I can submit notarized documentation into evidence at trial in lieu of potential witnesses coming to Canada to testify as long as legitimate contact information is given to the other side. Please help me put this 16 year struggle to rest, once and for all. Can you provide a detailed, technical analysis that will clearly explain and clarify the "how to", signed by yourself and duly notarized? A current curriculum vitae would be extremely helpful. Please advise of the associated costs so that I may forward payment. Thank you for time and co-operation in this matter. Looking forward to your immediate reply as time is now of the essence. Respectfully submitted, John P. Marinelli [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Readers interested in assisting John should contact him directly. I imagine several of you will be able to provide very expert assistance in this legal case he is in. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 06:28:55 EST From: James E Bellaire Subject: Indiana Cellular (was re: United States Cellular Answers Me) roamer1@RemoveThis.pobox.com (Stanley Cline) wrote: > ... I received several emails of a > press release issued by BellSouth and US Cellular -- BellSouth is > trading its Wisconsin cellular markets (including Green Bay, Janesville, > Oshkosh, Racine, and Milwaukee) for interests in other systems in the > South. BellSouth will get controlling interest in: > * Shelbyville, TN B-side (should be combined w/ BellSo Nashville > system) > * Bowling Green, Owensboro, Paducah KY A-side > * Corbin, Hazard KY A-side > * Evansville, IN metro area A-side (will probably be combined with > Indianapolis system) I would hope that the Evansville System also includes RSA7 Vincennes. That would provide continuous A band coverage from Indianapolis South on BellSouth. (52 counties) Almost as much coverage area as the B side GTE Mobilnet-Contel Cellular combination. (GTE owns both companies, now covering 68 counties.) Cellular Coverage in Indiana (with count of number of counties) Centennial Wireless 35 A Cellular One - Indy 29 A BellSouth US Cellular 13 A Cellular One - Chicago 2 A Southwestern Bell Contel - Louisville 2 A GTE/Contel Cellular One - Cincin. 1 A (Part of Centennial's Northern Indiana coverage is on towers owned by US Cellular. The sites have USCC's Threatening 'FCC Licensed Communication Site - No Trespassing' signs, invoking the FCC to keep people away. At least GTE and 360 put their callsign and location number on the signs.) GTE Mobilnet 40 B GTE/Contel Contel 28 B GTE/Contel US Cellular 12 B 360 Communication 7 B Bellsouth - Louisville 2 B Ameritech - Chicago 2 B Ameritech - Cincin. 1 B (LaPorte county is shared between Ameritech and GTE. I give it to GTE in the counts because they cover the rest of the RSA that LaPorte is part of.) BTW: Sprint PCS is busy building its Indianapolis sites (I noticed a completed one in Greenfield this past week, #108) and GTE Mobilnet and Cellular One (Bellsouth) are adding a lot of new towers this year. Most of the Indiana companies have replaced antennas on older towers with newer style 'boxes', closer to the ground. GTE has also replaced a few of the old monopoles near Indianapolis with more conventional tripod towers, as well as replacing antennas. James E. Bellaire bellaire@tk.com Webpage Available 23.5 Hrs a Day!!! http://www.iquest.net/~bellaire/ ------------------------------ From: Bruce Pennypacker Subject: Compuserve Wins Anti-Spam Lawsuit Date: 10 Feb 1997 14:12:16 GMT Organization: Applied Language Technologies Contact: Gail Whitcomb CompuServe, Inc. (614) 538-4457 gwhitcomb@csi.compuserve.com COMPUSERVE REPORTS E-MAIL COURT VICTORY COLUMBUS, Ohio, February 6, 1997 -- CompuServe (Nasdaq:CSRV), after winning the first-ever court decision of its kind making unauthorized junk e-mail illegal, responded today to a report that Cyber Promotions, Inc., a commercial mass e-mailer, would not accept a federal court's halting of its spamming activities directed against CompuServe subscribers. Cyber Promotions indicated that it intended to appeal that decision which follows the settlement of a similar suit by another ISP which continues to allow Cyber Promotions to send junk e-mail to their members. "The Court's decision has a broad impact as the first decision of its kind that says unauthorized mass junk e-mailing is illegal," said Steve Heaton, general counsel for CompuServe. "This precedent is likely to be used by other ISPs to protect against intrusive and unwanted junk e-mail. CompuServe's goal was to see this through to a binding court decision to prevent not only this defendants spamming efforts, but those of others who would seek to exploit CompuServe and its subscribers." The decision may be read at the following web site: http://wsgrgate.wsgr.com/resources/intprop/briefs/compu.htm Founded in 1969, CompuServe Incorporated provides the world's most comprehensive online/Internet access through its two brands CompuServe Interactive and SPRYNET. Through CompuServe, its Japanese licensee NIFTY-Serve and its affiliates around the world, more than 5 million home and business users in more than 185 countries are connected online and to the Internet. CompuServe Network Services manages complex global data communications environments for more than 1,000 corporate customers. With world headquarters in Columbus, Ohio, the CompuServe organization includes offices in Reading, UK; Munich; Utrecht, Netherlands; Zurich and Paris. Bruce Pennypacker Applied Language Technologies Remove .nospam from my address to e-mail me 215 First Street (617) 225-0012 Cambridge, MA 02142 ------------------------------ From: ctelesca@ncsu.campus.mci.net Subject: BellSouth's lousy Customer Service Date: 11 Feb 1997 13:51:00 GMT Organization: CampusMCI Back in May 1996 I found out that someone had apparently hacked the PIN for my Remote-Access Call-Forwarding service over a 18 month period and made a lot of calls that showed up on my bill as dial-direct calls (with no "F" rate code for these calls even though there is supposed to be one according to the back of the bill). I asked Bell South to investigate for me, but had a very hard time getting the technically-illiterate Customer Service people to understand how the R-A C-F service even worked. When I ran into a dead-end at BellSouth, I posted some questions to this newgroup, and heard from some very helpful people. Well, I need your help again. When BellSouth told me to contact AT&T (my LD provider), and AT&T told me to contact BellSouth, I knew I was getting the run-around. So I contacted my state's Public Utilities Commission for help. I now have a formal complaint filed with them in writing, which was supposed to keep BellSouth from cutting-off my service, but this morning BellSouth cut it off anyway. Even though the calls in question were made during an 18-month period between December 1994 and May 1996, BellSouth "recoursed" calls I made after May 1996, and that's why I was cut-off. What I need from you folks out there is any information you have about toll-fraud using Call-Forwarding services, billing and call-accounting information (using SS7, for example), how to deal with a TELCO that "recourses" calls against the customer's request, and refuses to deal with the calls the customer specifically refers to. Because of BellSouth screwing-up my phone service, you can't call me at (919) 676-2597 for the time being. You can either call me at (919) 982-0866 and page me (via my digital pager - enter your phone number and I'll call you back), or call me at (919) 847-0612 and leave a message, or call (919) 848-2500 and enter my phone number - 676-2597 - at the prompt and leave me a message. Hopefully this won't last long? Chris [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: In a way you are lucky someone from the PUC took any action at all. (I am assuming they did something with your written complaint.) If you complain to the Illinois Commerce Commission by phone, you are told a representative will call you back 'as soon as one becomes available ...' and when you get called back it is a call from someone at telco; generally a highly placed flunky authorized to make some decisions. Ditto with gas and electric service here; they just take your name and number then someone from the utility calls you back. Maybe you get satisfaction, maybe not. Anyway there seems to be some conflicting opinions about BellSouth (or do you refer to them as BS?) today. I ran your letter here in juxta- position with the press release issued by Bell South, which follows as the next item in this issue. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Mike King Subject: Customer Surveys Indicate BellSouth Phone Service Nation's Best Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 21:16:18 PST [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Anyway, here is today's BS ... err ... BellSouth view of the news. PAT] ----- Forwarded Message ----- Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 10:34:53 -0500 (EST) From: BellSouth Subject: Customer Surveys Indicate BellSouth Phone Service Nation's Best BellSouth .........................................February 10, 1997 Customer Surveys Indicate BellSouth Telephone Service Nation's Best ATLANTA -- Southerners love the telephone. They love talking on the telephone. They love optional telephone services. And they love BellSouth. For the third time in six months, a national survey of customer satisfaction with their local telephone service has rated BellSouth tops in the U. S. This time it's the American Consumer Satisfaction Index, a national survey conducted by the University of Michigan Business School and the American Society for Quality Control, published in the February 3 issue of FORTUNE magazine. Last fall, in independent surveys,both the Yankee Group and J. D. Power & Associates came to the same conclusion. "We've always enjoyed a mutual love affair with our customers," said BellSouth President Jere Drummond. "We do our utmost to provide the best possible telephone service for them and they have been appreciative of our efforts. It's really rewarding when surveys such as these confirm what we already know -- we provide the best telephone service in the nation to the best customers in the nation." Not only do BellSouth's customers appreciate their telephone company, they're also buying optional services and installing lines at record paces. Consider: on the average day, BellSouth customers have over 11,000 optional calling features added to their telephone service. Not average "business" day; every day, 365 days a year, BellSouth customers order more than 11,000 optional services such as Caller ID, three-way calling and call return. At the same time, BellSouth was installing more than one million new lines during a twelve-month period in 1996. That's a record for new lines installed by a U. S. telephone company. Now, BellSouth has more than 22 million lines in service in the nine southeastern states where the company operates. "While our region of the country has experienced dynamic growth, it's interesting to note that approximately half of the lines we added in 1996 were additional lines -- that is, lines being added to homes or businesses where telephone service was already working," Drummond pointed out. One of the ways BellSouth has endeared itself to its customers is by providing service when its customers want it. "To make our offices more accessible, we've expanded the hours customers can call us to order new services or to check on their bills. For the past three years, we've been open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. We've also expanded our installation and repair operations to seven-days a week," Drummond said. Another way BellSouth is reaching out to better serve its customers is through the company's multilingual center. Located in South Florida, the multilingual center provides assistance to non-English speaking customers in all of BellSouth's nine states. At this time, the center offers assistance in five languages, plus a number of additional dialects. "BellSouth has always taken pride in the quality of service we provide our customers. We have a tradition of service stretching back over 100 years and we intend to maintain and improve the quality of our service in the future," Drummond said. "As would-be competitors move into markets we serve, they know that they face a company that sets the standard for customer service, both in the southeast and nationally." BellSouth provides telecommunications services in nine Southeastern states, including Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee. With its headquarters in Atlanta, BellSouth serves 22 million local telephone lines and provides local exchange and intraLATA long distance service over one of the most modern telecommunications networks in the world. For more information on BellSouth, visit our site on the World Wide Web at http://www.bellsouth.com. For more information, call John Goldman, (205) 977-5007 john.t.goldman@bridge.bst.bls.com -------- Mike King * Oakland, CA, USA * mk@wco.com ------------------------------ Date: 12 Feb 1997 04:54:40 -0000 From: Shalom Septimus Subject: Last Laugh! Sorry, Wrong Number (800-S0S-APPL) Organization: UB Forwarded to the Digest, FYI: From: The Unsinkable Camille Klein Newsgroups: alt.tech-support.recovery Subject: Re: 800-S0S-APPL Date: 7 Feb 1997 08:01:03 -0700 Organization: Primenet (602)416-7000 The Fiendish Flouridators and the Elders of Zion forced Garner Miller to say: > I still remember when this 76-year-old woman called me and asked about > getting one of Apple's warranty exchanges on her PowerBook. I told her > she'd need to call Apple directly, and gave her the number: 800-SOS-APPL. > That's Ess-Ohh-Sss...i.e., 767-2775. She then called me back asking who in > the hell I thought she was, screamed for another five minutes, and was > ready to hang up on me. I couldn't understand what the problem was, so I > had her read back exactly what she'd dialed. Ohboy ... I can see where this is going. > Well, turns out she dialed Ess-ZERO-Ess (707-2775), and that's an ENTIRELY > different sort of phone line. Go ahead. Dial 800-707-2775 and take a > listen. I scared my coworkers I was laughing so hard. :-) *dials* *listens* *ROTFLHAOPHP* Now if that's not a meta-lart, I dunno what is!! :) Camille. Sharing this with her co-workers. All unsolicited commercial e-mail coming to this account is subject to a service charge of $250 per piece of mail. Sending any UCE to this account constitutes acceptance of these terms. http://www.primenet.com/~capella/mob.html Death to Playmates and Harmony Gold! ------- end of forwarded message ------- [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I called it, and yes it is filthy, lewd, crude and rude. Please note they are actually forwarding it to some other number, and also please note they are charging back the caller at some rate per minute, so you may want to make the call from some phone other than any you have to pay for personally (har har har!). They may have not been smart enough to identify and block out pay phones from being able to use their pay-per-minute cheap thrills line so a good place to call would be from your friendly neighborhood COCOT or Genuine Bell payphone. In the event those are blocked from the programming presented on 800-Ess Zero Ess APPL then I guess you will have to make the call through your employer's or school's phone system. That is, unless the phone administrator read this before you did and blocked it out. Enjoy! PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #39 *****************************