Barton.Bruce@camb.com (Barton F. Bruce) (03/14/91)
NET & T (NYNEX) just had their first ever leased line user's group meeting! It took the product manager eight months to get it approved. Times have changed. The old guard would NEVER have done something like that. We have been offered the chance to suggest agenda items for future meetings. THEY offered such a hot topic as CO-LOCATION before any user suggested it! We had a tour of their centralised network command facility, and a nice lunch. A fellow user sitting at lunch works at a VERY BIG name brand company, and he has LOTS of DDS circuits. He learned about DDS-II and its dramatically lower pricing at this meeting. (Too bad he doesn't read this news group.) This just shows telcos traditionally have failed to communicate properly with their users, and that this type of group NEEDS to be encouraged. We may yet have carriers that have some idea about what their customer's want, and customers that have some insight into the real thinking in the telcos! This is not complaint hour at a DPU hearing microphone, but is a serious meeting hosted by them at their facilities, and needs constructive dialog. Eventually they may broaden the scope to cover other areas (there were other questions/suggestions), but for now it is leased line DDS and T1, T3, SONET, Frame Relay, and NRS related issues. Such things as disaster recovery are appropriate, and there was a presentation on it in the first meeting. If you are a Mass. leased lines customer, and think you should be in this group, get your sales person to track down the Product Manager and submit your name. This MAY also extend to all of NYNEX's NE area, ask.