telecom@eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Moderator) (03/03/91)
Illinois Bell will open its switching offices to non-Bell competitors in a move expected to enhance competition in the arena of local telephone service in Chicago and improve the reliability of telephone networks that specialize in high speed data transfers. The new policy, effective April 7 pending final approval by the Illinois Commerce Commission, will allow Teleport Communications and Metropolitan Fiber Systems to interconnect their systems with Illinois Bell. Teleport and Metropolitan Fiber are waiting now for approval, but other competitors may be on the way. The tariff filed by IBT this past week would allow rival companies to resell Illinois Bell services to customers. By allowing this, Teleport and Metropolitan Fiber will both be able to offer packages that would otherwise be uneconomical. For the time being, the competitors will limit their offerings to business services, particularly in the area of high speed data transfers. The agreement grew out of negotiations between IBT and Teleport, which had filed a suit with the Illinois Commerce Commission over IBT's earlier reluctance to allow interconnection. According to Scott Bonney, director of regulatory affairs at Teleport, " ... a lot of telephone companies say they favor increased local competition, but it is mostly just lip service. With Illinois Bell though, the situation is different. Illinois Bell has always been a very enlightened organization; we feel they will be fair in dealing with market rivals." James Smith, director of regulatory affairs for Illinois Bell confirmed that the company will install and maintain switching equipment in its offices that meets the specifications of its competitors, most notably Teleport and Metropolitan Fiber. He would not commit to a specific start-up date but said 'later this spring' a routine will be in place for handling interconnect requests. Bonney also said that interconnection will increase the already wide diversity of telecom services in northern Illinois. "In a big way, interconnection will improve survivability of the communications infrastructure for Chicago," he noted. What other communities and/or local telcos are entertaining the idea of competition in local exchange service? What others are actually implementing it at this time as is Illinois Bell? PAT
peterm@sumax.seattleu.edu (Peter Marshall) (03/04/91)
Pat's 3/3 post poses an interesting question. In Washington, LEC
competition is now potentially on the horizon, virtually for the first
time.
At the PUC here, this has become a question of "first impression" with
registration applications and/or competitive classification petitions
to the PUC by GCI Fibernet and Electric Lightwave. The former is
controlled by TCI, and the latter is being represented at the PUC by
an attorney for a state org. of large telecom users.
In context, the City of Seattle is reviewing proposals, including one
from ELI, for a partner to develop a fiber net, and the Port of
Seattle is developing a teleport project.
Interest seems high from the industry in the state, and there's also
been some press attention so far.
Peter Marshall
halcyon!peterm@sumax.seattleu.edu
The 23:00 News and Mail Service - +1 206 292 9048 - Seattle, WA USAjohn@zygot.ati.com (John Higdon) (03/04/91)
On Mar 3 at 9:05, TELECOM Moderator writes: > What other communities and/or local telcos are entertaining the idea > of competition in local exchange service? What others are actually > implementing it at this time as is Illinois Bell? I would swear that if a person walked the streets of San Francisco and happened to utter the words, "Local Competition", a trap door would open in the sidewalk and the individual would never be heard from again. Pac*Bell, for good reason, is probably more afraid of LEC competition than any other telco in the country. Even as we speak, there are hearings covering the topic of competition in intraLATA toll traffic. Pac*Bell is of course bad-mouthing this with the argument that this "exclusivity" is what keeps "your telephone costs down". The threat is that basic rates will have to rise substantially to compensate for the loss of toll revenue. But the handwriting is on the wall. It appears that Pac*Bell will get its way in at least one aspect: the accessing of the intraLATA carrier. There will be no pre-subscription as there is with interLATA traffic. Each call will have to be prefixed with a THREE digit code, otherwise the call will be carried by Pac*Bell. This is no problem for those with dialers and smart PBXes, but, as usual, the Aunt Minnies of the world will still be patronizing Mother. Once again, Illinois Bell demonstrates why it is an industry leader and Pac*Bell proves what it is. John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 723 1395 john@zygot.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o !
0004133373@mcimail.com (Donald E. Kimberlin) (03/04/91)
In Digest v11, iss176, our Moderator opens with news from Chicago: > Illinois Bell will open its switching offices to non-Bell competitors > in a move expected to enhance competition in the arena of local > telephone service... > The new policy, effective April 7 pending final approval by the > Illinois Commerce Commission, will allow Teleport Communications and > Metropolitan Fiber Systems to interconnect their systems with Illinois > Bell. Teleport and Metropolitan Fiber are waiting now for approval, > but other competitors may be on the way. > What other communities and/or local telcos are entertaining the idea > of competition in local exchange service? What others are actually > implementing it at this time as is Illinois Bell? Actually, Pat, it's among the first visible cracks in a curtain the FCC has been pulling away at local Telcos as another facet of its drive to break the local Telco monopoly. It's part of Open Network Architecture (ONA) with an FCC requirement to provide Comparably Efficient Interconnection (CEI) to other providers in the local arena. Within the past week, New York Telephone announced it would provide similar opening of its premises. The "work" of forging this crack has been underway for quite a few years, and only now is it becoming visible. (I worked on a local fiber job in Los Angeles a year and a half ago that had entrances from others planned into the Los Angeles PacBell Building on its Grand Avenue cable vault side. Everybody close to the business knows (and knew) it was just a matter of time.) Another operative buzzword of these actions is "co-location," meaning the provision of a space inside the Telco building for the obviously needed terminal gear of the "Alternative Access Carriers," or AAC's as the Teleports and Metropolitan Fibers are coming to be called, at least from the interstate point of view. The actual means of doing this are Draconian at best. It seems to be evolving into a typical scene in which the "other parties" have to rent square feet of floor space, enclosed within a locked screen at the insistence of the local Telco to "protect" against accusation that the Telco's people ever meddled with the gear. Further, the Telco provides only AC power, not any of its already-present DC power, so the "other firms" have to duplicate a function, providing their own rectifiers and back- up power. Then, the "other parties" have to provide building heat laod information on their equipment in order to arrange a charge for the space, power consumption and cooling load. So, nobody is welcoming these interlopers into the Temple of the Telco. Fortunately, fiber technology is such that interconnection of DS-1's and DS-3's are what the Telco will accept, and the physical requirements can be met with today's technology. As to the Chicago scene, a local fiber carrier called Diginet is actually longer established and probably is in the fray as much or more than the others. Diginet actually operates all the way from Chicago to Milwaukee and has done so for a half decade already. So it's quiet in your town? That doesn't mean there's no activity. Just don't expect your Telco to announce it in your bill stuffer. They'd rather you didn't know about it. And while we have the topic of Alternative Access open, let's take note that MCI bought the transmission portion of Western Union a year or so back. That acquistion included miles and miles of Western Union conduits in the streets of more cities than any of us knew about. I knew of a list of 17 major cities where WUTCo had cables in the street for years. But I even heard of digging in the streets of Oklahoma City that exposed _wooden_ conduits marked "Western Union" just a year or so ago. At the moment, MCI is so beleagured it's doubtful they even know much about this asset, but you can expect them to either: a.) sell it in bits and pieces to the others, or b.) have a realization and announcement sometime in the future that MCI has a new business area open. It is, without doubt, an important announcement and one we will see much more of, grudgingly admitted to by the Telcos. Free market, here we come ... kicking, clawing and screaming the whole way!
wb8foz@mthvax.cs.miami.edu (David Lesher) (03/05/91)
| And while we have the topic of Alternative Access open, let's | take note that MCI bought the transmission portion of Western Union a | year or so back. That acquistion included miles and miles of Western | Union conduits in the streets of more cities than any of us knew | about. I knew of a list of 17 major cities where WUTCo had cables in | the street for years. But I even heard of digging in the streets of | Oklahoma City that exposed _wooden_ conduits marked "Western Union" | just a year or so ago. Hmm, This brings up a VERY interesting scenaro. WU used to have not just cable, but pneumatic message tube virtually everywhere in many Eastern US cities. A late friend of mine who worked for WU through both World Wars talked about the seventeen-odd branch offices that they had in downtown Cleveland alone - all interconnected by message tube. Folks, you can stuff an awful lot of fiber bandwidth down just one of those tubes. Heck, if you did it right, maybe you could get the fiber pulled in by a carrier tube - no digging needed. But don't worry, John. Pac Bell is safe. Chances are, California hadn't been discovered when WU was putting in tubes;-]
cyberoid@milton.u.washington.edu (Robert Jacobson) (03/06/91)
Given that there are unavoidable overhead costs associated with colocation, who picks up the tab? And who sets it? Do these new providers of local service pay any sort of access charge, or are they (1) creamskimming the business market and (2) providing telcos with a foil for arguments that will deregulate "competitive" (i.e., read "business") services and put the greater rate burden on residential customers? In California, the energy utilities were prodded by neoconservative regulators into permitting competition, too. The net result was much lower rates for very big customers (the $10 million+/year sort) and much HIGHER rates for the "core" customers, those unable to avail themselves of competitive services (who don't want the overhead of serving smaller customers). Even small business, which finds itself in a neither fish nor fowl situation pays -- in fact, in many situations, it pays the most. Local competition has a nice ring. Like the cash register's... Bob Jacobson
npl@mozart.att.com (Nickolas Landsberg) (03/07/91)
In article <telecom11.182.8@eecs.nwu.edu> wb8foz writes: > This brings up a VERY interesting scenaro. WU used to have not just > cable, but pneumatic message tube virtually everywhere in many Eastern > US cities. A late friend of mine who worked for WU through both World > Wars talked about the seventeen-odd branch offices that they had in > downtown Cleveland alone - all interconnected by message tube. > Folks, you can stuff an awful lot of fiber bandwidth down just one of > those tubes. Heck, if you did it right, maybe you could get the fiber > pulled in by a carrier tube - no digging needed. While I was running underground construction in NYC (more years ago than I care to admit to) we used to come accross these beasts in the streets. Since they were unused, we generally wound up ripping them up (of course, after calling the "rightful owners" to see if they wanted the salvage value of the copper :-) ). I doubt if you could find an unbroken run of these pneumatic tubes anywhere nowadays. Nick Landsberg [Moderator's Note: A nice deal here in Chicago are the miles and miles of underground tunnels built at the turn of the century by the now long-defunct Chicago Tunnel Company. The tunnels go under every street downtown, and connect all the office buildings. Originally (in 1900) used to carry coal in to heat the buildings and to carry garbage out, the tunnels have been used in recent years for lots of fiber optic cables and other utility service wires. PAT]