prahrens@mips.com (12/20/90)
Recent dicussion has produced: >In another bit of PacBell stupidity, I recently tried to get >distinctive ringing on my single line... >Is this Catch-22 idiocy nationwide, or is it only PacBell that has >this problem? >[Moderator's Note: ComStar, also known as Intellidial in some areas and >Starline in others is tariffed as a service for 2 or more actual lines >in a group. Many or most of the features in ComStar would not work >with just one line. In fact having only two lines makes ComStar a >little bit of an overkill. It may be that PacBell only has Distinctive >Ringing available through ComStar at present. I know Illinois Bell >could not offer Distinctive Ringing until recently when they upgraded >their software. They did offer it in Centrex and Starline service, but >not on single residential lines until ahout two months ago. PAT] Once again, I write as an interested reader of your newsgroup, not as a representative of any telecommunications company. Your note is essentially correct. The intended purpose of "Distinctive Ringing" is to provide a difference in the alerting of intragroup vs. intergroup (i.e., incoming from the outside world) calls, together with bells and whistles* -- actually additional ringing patterns -- to distinguish attendant calls, etc. This is implemented in 1/1A ESS via Centrex, so calls from outside the Centrex group are distinguished from those from within. The current generation of digital switches require a different strategy to obtain this business objective. The RBOC's are making a serious effort to deliver "Centrex-like" services to smaller users. Commstar (and I presume Intellidial) were the earliest efforts to accomplish this. Now RBOC's are making a business decision to make Centrex available to POTS customers ... even when the transition is transparent to the user, this usually entails assigning the formerly POTS line to a Centrex group. (As an aside, I expect that ISDN will experience a similar "downward evolution" by the turn of the century.) In the case of your poster, notice he has only one line. The presence of an intragroup call is thus illogical (from this feature's point of view) and there is no basis for distinctive ringing as the vendors have defined it. I would humbly like to point out that the RBOC's do not in general design these features. Rather, the features are the result of consultation, discussion, and review among the Bellcore Client Companies, vendors such as Northern Telecom and ATT, and so on. Quite often, the feature the user "sees" is a set (some would say "kludge") of these design-by-committee features. *Pun intended. Merry Christmas, Pete Ahrens
ceb@csli.stanford.edu (Charles Buckley) (12/22/90)
Recently I wrote: >In another bit of PacBell stupidity, I recently tried to get >distinctive ringing on my single line... >Is this Catch-22 idiocy nationwide, or is it only PacBell that has >this problem? To which Pat Townson, the mMderator, replied: >[Moderator's Note: . . . [IBT] >could not offer Distinctive Ringing until recently when they upgraded >their software. They did offer it in Centrex and Starline service, but >not on single residential lines until ahout two months ago. PAT] And to which Pete Ahrens of PacBell, wrote (ex-officio), that Distinctive Ringing was part of a market strategy aimed at Centrex customers, to distinguish outside calls from within. He then went on at length, essentially about RBOC's like PacBell making serious efforts to bring Centrex to the masses. He finished by writing: "In the case of your poster, notice he has only one line. The presence of an intragroup call is thus illogical (from this feature's point of view) and there is no basis for distinctive ringing as the vendors have defined it. "I would humbly like to point out that the RBOC's do not in general design these features. Rather, the features are the result of consultation, discussion, and review among the Bellcore Client Companies, vendors such as Northern Telecom and ATT, and so on. Quite often, the feature the user "sees" is a set (some would say "kludge") of these design-by-committee features." To which I respond: Well gee, let's all just wallow in apologism! Seriously, do you think anyone ever imagined that anything else was going on? What you're saying is that PacBell depends primarily on Bellcore and their hardware vendors to describe consumer demand to them. This is like collecting military intelligence by waiting for history books to be published, and then reading them. Any army that does this will lose. You won't even catch Saddam doing something so dumb. The only reason PacBell gets away with it is that it is a protected monopoly. If the Japanese could sell dial tone here, PacBell would fare even worse than GM and Ford have. PacBell should clean up its act, and be responsive to customer requests, period. Sandbagging with saccharine politeness and browbeating the customer by defining his requests as illogical are no substitute, especially when others are willing to (but barred by law from) fulfilling them. These blocking strategies seem particularly misplaced when they exist only to protect intra-organizational political traditions. Merry Christmas to you too.
john@bovine.ati.com (John Higdon) (12/23/90)
Charles Buckley <ceb@csli.stanford.edu> writes: > PacBell should clean up its act, and be responsive to customer > requests, period. Sandbagging with saccharine politeness and > browbeating the customer by defining his requests as illogical are no > substitute, especially when others are willing to (but barred by law > from) fulfilling them. These blocking strategies seem particularly > misplaced when they exist only to protect intra-organizational > political traditions. Hear! Hear! I was beginning to feel a little out of step with reality. One of the reasons I have TEN lines is because distinctive ringing is not available (one of the comprehensive list of "not available" features) from my local phone company. With this in mind, we have Pacific Telesis running full-page ads decrying the regulations preventing it from pursuing other service and manufacturing markets. Its regulated arm, Pac*Bell, provides the barest, most minimal telephone service to be found in the world and yet summons up the effrontery to whine in the media that we the public are losing out because regulations prohibit the company from competing with enhanced information service providers and equipment manufacturers. I have lived within the service area of Pac*Bell (formerly Pacific Telephone which was even worse) all of my life. It has become a way of life to have new telephone services become commonplace in the rest of the country five to ten years before seeing the light of day in California. There were some who thought that this would change with divestiture. They were wrong. If there was another telephone company, I'd sign up in a minute. How about competing LECs? Wouldn't that be great? John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 723 1395 john@bovine.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o !