"Donald E. Kimberlin" <0004133373@mcimail.com> (05/19/91)
In article <digestv11,iss366>, John Higdon <john@zygot.ati.com> reports: > Since the blocking scheme cannot be used except in stored-program-type > offices, and the PUC requires blocking be provided to all who request it > (if at all available), a cheap and dirty way to get out of a crossbar > switch is to order blocking. A friend had a crossbar number in an office > that was also served by an ESS. Pac*Bell informed him that the ESS was > "closed" (not accepting new lines) even if he wanted custom calling > features. I told him to request 900/976 blocking. He now has an ESS-served > number, changed at no charge by Pac*Bell. How doggedly the "Bell-Shaped Head" lives on! One could not imagine it's been more than seven years since we lynched Ma Bell. John's story relates how we must still use the same sort of embarrassment techniques on that mentality, catching them at their "tricks" from an oblique angle, rather than talking sense to them. And, the monopoly-era attitudes aren't limited to PacBell or to the LEC's either. I lost a good bit of the past two weeks and had a WAN rearrangement blown by AT&T, when after first arguing, then agreeing their position was ignorant, then balking at the last minute, finally agree after a presentation that they had done exactly what they kept saying was "illegal" a dozen times over in the same way in the same city. They even tried calling my boss to see if they couldn't get me off their case. Well, now we'll get what we wanted, which they had to admit wasn't "illegal" at all ... a couple of weeks late. All the AT&T breast-beating about being the "leaders" and those others copy wears very thin when one keeps getting these throwbacks to the Stone Age of Telecommunications. The sad truth is that AT&T still is filled with people who remember too much of the "good old days," their competitors are filled with their cast-offs, and so the "old ways" continue. It's getting so that every month I find they are constantly amazed with what they can accomplish instead of being their own worst enemy. Despite all the glitz and claims, we really have not gotten very far at all. The Era of Telecommunications is yet to dawn.