S.PAE@DEEP-THOUGHT.MIT.EDU (Philip A. Earnhardt) (09/15/86)
From: Marvin Sirbu <sirbu@gauss.ECE.CMU.EDU>
Subject: 10xxx Dialing
1) higher billing costs since users would now need multiple long distance
bills each month rather than one.
Does it really cost the Local Operating Companies more to bill? I thought that
the local billing service was optionally provided by the Locals and, in fact,
would probably be a reasonable source of revenue.
2) The possibility of intensive price-based competition, which would
lower profitability.
The price of LD service should have little effect on the Locals. They're not
in that market.
3) If users were really responsive to price changes, minor fluctuations
in relative prices could lead to major shifts in carrier usage causing
enormous capacity planning problems, both for the inter-exchange
carrier and for the local exchange carrier with respect to access lines.
I find it difficult to believe that a significant number of residental users
would go to the trouble of looking up individual call rates. On the other
hand, if it were worth the trouble to route calls based on their price
changes, I'd be large business who would do it. The large volume users would
have the knowledge and computrons to make this kind of switching feasable.
(Personally, I don't think it would fly. Can you imagine dialing a remote
modem and potentially getting a different LD carrier on a daily basis...)
In short, the high-volume businesses are the ones who will find the loopholes.
Residental users don't have the patience or the resources to do it. Besides,
your capacity problems are typically during the business day, when the
residental users are the minority.
If 10xxx were as widely publicized as the voting process has been, two main
patterns would probably emerge. First, users would try a few carriers for a
month or two, then select one as their primary carrier. Second, some users
would usually use their primary carrier, but would occasionally "fall back" to
some secondary carrier. These uses of 10xxx seem to me to be fundamental
elements of equal access. It's a shame that no telephone company seems to be
talking about them.
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