DREUBEN@eagle.wesleyan.edu (Douglas Scott Reuben) (01/01/91)
A while back I asked that anyone who has experienced unusually long
delays with GTE's Follow Me Roaming to send some mail, so that I could
find out if the problem was not specific to me. After receiving a lot
of letters about such delays, especially at night during the
"automatic deactivation" period, I wrote to GTE/FMR in Tampa to
complain about the deficiencies in their service.
The following is the response I received from them, on Dec 24,1990:
Dear Mr. Reuben:
Thank you for your interest in GTE's Follow Me Roaming Service and for
taking the time to write to us about problems you have had with
activations during the early morning hours. This letter is to explain
the system's operation, and to let you know what GTE Telecommunication
Services is doing to improve our service.
The FMR service we provide to cellular carriers is a very complex,
state-of- the-art system. It is comprised of a connection to each
carrier's cellular switch, a control host computer, and a nationwide
data network interconnecting the elements. The overall response of the
system depends on the response of the cellular carriers' switches,
which is impacted by volume and time of day. Therefore, longer
activations can occur.
The system's current design is for deactivations to occur at midnight,
local time, for the system in which roaming is to take place. This
enables FMR to complete a large number of deactivations during the
local switch's least active time; unfortunately, this can create the
situation described in your letter.
Since assuming full responsibility for FMR operations and product
engineering in August, 1990, we have significantly improved overall
response time by taking the following actions:
o The FMR system was moved from shared computer resources and placed
on its own computer. This increased the capacity and allowed us
greatly reduce activation times in some heavy markets. The FMR
application was later migrated to a larger, more powerful computer.
This move is expected to decrease activation times and provide
the capacity for future growth.
o Enhancements have been installed to improve priority of post-
midnight activations and to allow simultaneous two-way
communications between the FMR central processor and the
processors at the switch sites. These enhancements are expected
further reduce activation times in heavy markets.
We are continuously developing additional enhancements to further
improve FMR. We are proud of the advances we have made with our Follow
Me Roaming service, and look forward to continued improvements in the
future. This service is currently available in more than 200 U.S.
metropolitan areas, and 46 Canadian cities, making it as convenient as
possible for you to use you mobile telephone anywhere.
All of us here at GTE Telecommunication Services are deeply committed
to providing strong, reliable, and timely services to cellular
carriers. We regret any difficulties you may have experienced, but
please be assured we shall continue working to constantly improve FMR.
Once again, thank you for your interest. We look forward to serving
your needs in the future.
Sincerely,
Devora DeMarco
Customer Services Manager
GTE Telecommunication Services, Inc.
P.O. Box 2924
Tampa, FL 33601-2924
---------------
A few things I noted:
*The FMR deactivation is local to the switch you are ROAMING in,
rather than at 12AM Eastern time (or Central time while GTE was in
Houston), as had been my experience over the summer in California and
Nevada. It is also not dependent upon your "home" switch's
deactivation cycle. Thus, a customer from NYNEX in Mass, for example,
who is roaming in GTE's San Francisco system, will not be deactivated
any sooner than a Pac*Tel customer from Nevada roaming in the same
GTE/SF system.
*What is so special about two-way signalling between the host system
at GTE/FMR in Tampa and the processors at the switch sites? Prior to
August could communication only take place one way? IE, would all
deactivations from a system be sent to GTE/FMR, and in the meantime
while this was taking place no activations could take place since the
FMR system could not communicate with the switch sites? I'm not sure I
understand exactly how simultaneous two-way communications really
helps out all that much.
Overall, though, a rather thorough response. I was particularly
impressed with speed of the response, as I had mailed my letter to
them only two weeks before I received theirs. (Not to be petty, but
compare this to Metro Mobile/Connecticut, my "A" carrier, whom I wrote
to 2 MONTHS ago and have not received anything from as of yet! Which
company appears to be more concerned with the satisfaction of their
customers...? Hmmm... That's a hard one! :) )
I'd like to also thank everyone who responded to my initial posting.
Your letters did indeed help me out a lot!
One final thing: Although this doesn't have anything to do directly
with FMR, California and Nevada "B" customers can get all of the
Custom Calling features anywhere in CA or Nevada now. I heard on GTE's
customer service recording (the one they play while you wait twenty
minutes to talk to someone! :) ) that the new *28/*29 system will
allow you to use your feature packages anyhwere. I wonder how they
work out rates for Call- Forwarding and similar features...From your
home site? Or from your local/ Roaming site? In any event, this
system will hopefully lessen the amount of CA-based activations and
activation times for those roaming outside of California and Nevada.
Doug
dreuben@eagle.wesleyan.edu dreuben@wesleyan.bitnetjohn@bovine.ati.com (John Higdon) (01/02/91)
Douglas Scott Reuben <DREUBEN@eagle.wesleyan.edu> writes: > A while back I asked that anyone who has experienced unusually long > delays with GTE's Follow Me Roaming to send some mail, so that I could > find out if the problem was not specific to me. I had a problem with FMR after my last trip to LA. While in southern California, I daily set FMR on my handheld except on the day that I drove home. Since I was going to be on the road, it didn't seem like the thing to do. Since FMR cancels automatically at midnight each day, I gave it no further thought. I got back to the Bay Area and after a few days had gone by had a situation where I needed to page someone and have them return the call to my handheld. I waited and waited for the return call. Finally, my pager went off and the number was that of the person I paged. He told me that he had tried to call, but got the "away from the vehicle" recording. I passed it off. The next day, the same thing happened with someone else. I asked, "Was the recorded voice male or female?" "Male", was the response. Well, the GTE Mobilnet (San Francisco) recordings all feature a female voice. You guessed it--FMR was still in effect nearly a week after I had left LA. The fix was simple: dial '*720' which cancels forwarding. For all I know, it's still up in the LA system. It might be a good idea for cellular providers to append their system names to any recordings. It might reveal a stuck FMR or other unintended situation more readily. John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 723 1395 john@bovine.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o !