roy@cs.umn.edu> (05/21/91)
In message <telecom11.379.3@eecs.nwu.edu>,floyd@ims.alaska.edu (Floyd Davidson) writes about intrastate phone rates in Alaska: > The rates are lower, but the ratio is still the same. LA would be > cheaper than Nome. I don't know for sure, but isn't intrastate > service more expensive than interstate just about everywhere? Yes, in my experience they are. > Now the interstate rate structure is based on the cost of providing > interstate service, and the same with intrastate service. Before I left Alaska, I recall GCI campaigning heavily for the right to compete against Alascom for intrastate service. Did anything ever come of that? GCI claimed it would be able to slash intrastate rates with a comparable level of service. Roy M. Silvernail roy%cybrspc@cs.umn.edu cybrspc!roy@cs.umn.edu roy@cybrspc.uucp(maybe!)
Floyd Davidson <floyd@ims.alaska.edu> (05/21/91)
In article <telecom11.384.6@eecs.nwu.edu> cybrspc!roy@cs.umn.edu (Roy M. Silvernail) writes: > Before I left Alaska, I recall GCI campaigning heavily for the right > to compete against Alascom for intrastate service. Did anything ever > come of that? GCI claimed it would be able to slash intrastate rates > with a comparable level of service. This may be hard for me to discuss objectively, but it has some amusing facits. Intrastate competition is coming to Alaska in the next few weeks. (You may derive my concern from the fact that I don't even know the date ...) Alascom, Inc. (owned by Pacific Telecom) is the regulated carrier of last resort, and General Communications Inc. is the alternate carrier. Interstate competition has existed for a few years and has now gone up the ladder to Equal Access in major markets. The only significant effect that it has had is one scheduled rate reduction was instituted six months ahead of schedule, (The schedule was worked out between AT&T and Alascom for rate equalization, in 1979.) and a very interesting advertising battle between the two companies. I work for Alascom, but I would vote GCI's commericials just a cut above! Better jabs. One GCI commercial made a good deal of fun at the expense of the general manager of Alascom, who was headquartered in Vancouver, Wn. They asked if you knew where your money was going, while showing a man with a briefcase walking through an airport ... on the brief case was a bumber sticker that said " I love VANCOUVER ". It was good. And then one talked about how the Alascom manager got to work (local hire is a big deal here), and showed a 737 landing. Then they cut to how GCI's manager gets to work in an old beat up VW bus (cause he is a *real* Alaskan). Alascom then ran a commercial showing the GCI manager's other car, the $50,000 model. Of course it came out in the papers that the poor man had to drive the VW all winter because it would have looked pretty bad if he didn't! (The other car belonged to his wife, from before they were married too.) It goes on and on. They both do really good ads. The status right now is that GCI is complaining to the FCC that Pacific Telecom won't sell them circuits on the new Pacific fiber optic cable at a reasonable rate and refused originally to let them buy into it. And AT&T is complaining that they want more compression (twice as many circuits) used on the fiber to reduce their cost (subsidies to Alascom). Alascom is claiming they haven't even filed a tariff on the fiber, how can the rate be too high, and what do mean we should compress our circuits more? You don't compress your circuits that much, why should we provide inferior service? And GCI advertised that they were going to fiber before Alascom did too! And they will, right after Alascom does, by leasing circuits from Alascom. Actually Alascom's competition is also one of their best customers! Kind of hard to knock that. The sun is up 18 hours a day, and mosquito's the size of hummingbirds are everywhere, I'm on vacation, and when I get back to work there will be competition. And nothing will change. Floyd L. Davidson | Alascom, Inc. pays me, |UA Fairbanks Institute of Marine floyd@ims.alaska.edu| but not for opinions. |Science suffers me as a guest.