king@uunet.uu.net> (05/07/91)
Just came back from Ann Arbor and my sister's commencement from the University of Michigan. (And her transition from a starving college student to a starving high school teacher.) She put me up in the Comfort Inn, which has a very interesting phone system. First off, this hotel is reasonably new. I'd say less than two years judging from the location and construction. The door locks are mag stripe readers and the keys look like credit cards. This is a technology whose time has not yet come. I got the key to work only about 75% of the time, my sainted-but-not-technologically-inclined mother had about a 50% hit ratio. At one point the mag stripe on my key got corrupted and would open the outside door (which would take any room key) but not our room door. But on to the phones. The room, a standard cheap-rate double room, had three phones. One by the beds, one on the desk, and one in the bathroom. (Remember the HP "What if?" television ads from a few years back? You know, where the HP engineer is driving through the desert and gets and idea, phones back to the office and says "What if...?" just before the voice over kicks in? I think the same ad should be re-done using that bathroom phone. But I digress.) The bathroom and bedside phones were standard hotel offerings, but the desk phone was a slick Siemens model. I've never seen its equal in a $50 a night room, or even in more expensive hotel rooms. It had a couple dozen speed dial buttons. Most were programmed with room service, housekeeping, etc. The leftovers had local businesses, like Pizza Hut. No advertising on the phone, just a button labelled "Pizza Hut". Nice. The phone had a 12 digit display of the number you were dialing, last-number redial, and speakerphone! It also had a connect-time clock, but a little experimentation showed that the clock just recorded time from roughly one ring. It didn't sense supervision, just assumed your party would pick up by one ring. As long as that clock isn't the billing clock I'm happy. No RJ-11 jack on the phone for data, but the phone plugged into the wall with RJ-11 that you could easily pull. Come to think of it, the wall plate had two RJ-11 jacks so you didn't even have to bother unplugging the phone. The sheet next to the phone mentioned that local calls were 75 cents (boo hiss!), and there was a 75 cent surcharge for long distance. It didn't mention a surcharge for 800 numbers or calling cards, but I wouldn't be surprised to see it. I used my calling card a few times, but my dad paid for the room and I never saw the bill. The AOS used was "Telesphere", which I didn't trust longer than it took me to dial 10288. I got AT&T and happily made my calls. The sheet did say that Telesphere was the default long distance carrier, but I don't think it mentioned how to reach the other ones. Top points for hardware, but the software (billing) is still par for the course. At least hotel designers (one hotel designer, at any rate) are taking the information age into account when they build new hotels! Steven King, Motorola Cellular (...uunet!motcid!king)