0002909785@mcimail.com (J. Stephen Reed) (10/12/90)
Today (Oct. 12), in the <Chicago Tribune> (and, I presume, in other large daily newspapers) there appeared a full-page ad from the Seven Sisters of local telephony. The message from the BOCs read, in part: "America's students could have low-cost access to the nation's leading scholars over existing telephone lines. But government restrictions limit their choice. [Picture of three students standing rapt before a monitor.] "You could have instant access to all kinds of time and money saving services over the telephone. Europeans, for example, have access to advanced electronic yellow pages over the phone on a mini-screen. But government restrictions limit your choice. [Pix of a monitor with French viewtext service displayed.] "DOESN'T AMERICA DESERVE A CHOICE? "[Summary of the argument for allowing BOCs to provide information services and long distance, familiar to most tuning in here.] Let Congress know that you want the right to choose. And, you want it now." Methinks the BOCs doth protest too much. I have no wish to rehash the breakup of the Bell System on here (your Moderator and I have done so for hours on end over Chicago pizza). But I have to wonder how long the BOCs are going to insist on having their many restrictions removed ... yet resist any notion of a removal in law, as well as in fact, of their local monopoly powers. The problem that some raise of duplicating networks and phone numbers under local competition is not a real problem -- beyond getting obstacles out of the way. Bellcore and the ITU can work out details if they are allowed to do so. Some screwy and onerous antitrust laws would have to be discarded, but they ought to be anyway. And there is likely to be tremendous pressure toward one-home-one-number on the part of residential consumers, for few people would live with yet another phone hassle. (Residential service is the only "two numbers" area at issue. Businesses already put up with two systems, in a sense. Have you noticed how little outcry there has been over having to handle fax numbers <as well as> voice numbers? If businesses can deal with this -- and telex and MCI/AT&T/etc. mail numbers as well -- they'll either absorb handling more than one voice number system or will stampede in the marketplace to what they have now.) Multiple local telco connections to one instrument or PBX may not have been physically possible for most of this century, but the only real thing that stands in its way these days is the local regulatory apparatus. Bandwidth and channel capacity? Two-thirds of the nation has a second cable coming into the house already. Were any of you as impressed as I was by the special edition here by Donald Kimberlin (end of August) and its facts on ending the local dial tone monopoly? The unused capacity on cable TV systems that are <already in place> is enough for another Bell System network! Why shouldn't they be free to <openly> interconnect and resell it? Even if the arguments of T. Vail & Co. for one unified near-monopoly system were justified in the 1910's on technical grounds (I doubt it), they are being undercut more each day. Everything from Motorola's new Iridium satellite system to your cellular phone is undercutting those ideas. I, a telephone non-junkie, can see this. So can the BOCs. And they'll fight to the death under law for power that they are highly unlikely to keep in an open marketplace. At one time there were no phone choices, period. Market pressure and, I admit, overhasty action on Judge Greene's part has opened up choices within the home, or apartment building, and from the CO out to most of the world. The only place we still have monopoly is from the junction box in the basement to the COs. Why must this last segment of the phone network remain a monopoly cast in concrete? If the Seven Sisters let go of the local monopoly -- and admit to it under law, as well as in fact -- they might just get their chance to compete in those lucrative information services. We'd all be better off. Steve Reed Liberty Network, Ltd. * P.O. Box 11296 * Chicago, IL 60611 0002909785@mcimail.com [Moderator's Note: Steve is correct about the many discussions we've had 'over pizza', but he forgot to mention how many pitchers of beer were also involved; and that of course has a direct relationship to the lucidity and validity of the arguments presented as the night goes on. :) PAT]
jeffj@uunet.uu.net (10/16/90)
Steve Reed writes:
X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 734, Message 1 of 9
(Describing how the BOCs want to go into the information services...)
"[Summary of the argument for allowing BOCs to provide information
services and long distance, familiar to most tuning in here.] Let
Congress know that you want the right to choose. And, you want it
now."
I'm not swayed by the ad because:
1) The phone companies already spend millions of dollars on their PACs
(political action committees) and other lobbyists.
2) Aren't there enough computer networks already? What do the phone
companies want to do: compete with Compuserve, Dow Jones, Prodigy,
Delphi, USENET, Fidonet, etc.? Unless they have something new and
unique, they'll have the upper hand that the decree was preventing.
3) I don't believe that France and other countires invested so heavily
in videotext because the wanted to, but because they HAD TO to catch
up with their backlog! I've heard that France had a waiting list
years long to get a phone, so it was common for a phone number to stay
with the house/apartment, thus making the phone book/directory
assistance useless. Someone had to bankroll the videotext business,
so what was the motivation? It sure wasn't purely a desire to advance
the state of the art!
4) How will it be tarriffed? Have NYNEX's "INFO LOOK" and the
Canadian ALEX videotext done well enough to justify such services? I
don't believe so. I think the BOCs have run out of worthy causes to
spend their advertising money are are trying to create a new market,
and get their finger in the pie. Just like the misc.consumers
discussions about how banks are making people use the ATM machines in
favor of real tellers, the phone company will encourage people to use
the on-line services in preferance to the live operators for directory
assistance, etc.
I'm not saying it's all bad. There are too many places that don't
have phone books. If they made those calling card phone CRT terminals
interactive and allowed things like directory lookup (to eliminate the
usually mutilated phone book), rate lookup and showing the cost of the
call DURING THE PHONE CALL, then fine, expand those services and bring
them to my home. Do you see these tests anywhere? NO! If the phone
companies were serious, there would be test markets first.
Side effects of such phones would be:
1) Encourage people to get and use calling cards since the terminal
phones don't take coins.
2) Knock the heck out of COCOTs that can't offer these services.
(Ummm, unless there's equal access to this information (haha, non BOC
payohones don't even get call supervision) then the BOC equipment will
have yet another monopoly on service.)
Jeffrey Jonas
jeffj@synsys.uucpschoff@uu.psi.com (Martin Schoffstall) (10/18/90)
This is enormously galling to the people who have spent large amounts of time building the US Internet over the last five to ten years, let alone the US Public Data Networks. Mostly what I see are the Europeans emulating what happened in the US several years ago: governent sponsored/controlled research&education T1 TCP/IP and "OSI", while the US begins the moves into commercial internetworks. Right now we have hundreds of Columbia students using terminal servers in Boston, Hartford, WhitePlains, NYC, Newark, DC, LA using the PSINet portion of the Internet. Rutgers has an in depth NJ system for its use, as does Merit for the state of Michigan, all of them are free to the students and in truth pretty low cost to the sites that amortize the internetworking bill. While I think Yellow Pages is nice for industry/business/home (partially why it was done in France) I don't think students are a good represenative audience, I needed to know where a couple of pizza places were because that is all I could afford. Even today as a business person, I'll use the White Pages 500 times more than I do the Yellow Pages. Hence the Internet interest in White Pages using X.500, something working today. What they had was a monopolistic situation that got a lot of terminals into a lot of places, and the continuation of a now ancient technology that in no way compares against an Xterminal which I can drive from home with a V.32/V.42bis modem, or better yet on my LAN connected to the Internet. I'm sure if we had let Bell stay in control or allowed the RBOC's to mandate the future, I'd be using a 600 baud V.52 terminal equivalent right now. Honestly, if this is the best example that they are going to cite, then there is no good reasons to even let them do more than POTS. Marty
peter@ficc.ferranti.com (peter da silva) (10/20/90)
In article <13761@accuvax.nwu.edu> synsys!jeffj@uunet.uu.net writes: > "[Summary of the argument for allowing BOCs to provide information > services and long distance, familiar to most tuning in here.] Let > Congress know that you want the right to choose. And, you want it > now." SouthWestern Bell has already implemented such a service in Houston, under the name SourceLine. They did so well at it that it's now out of business and a commercial competitor, U.S.Videotel, has taken over. The service is simply horrible, and a lot of people are signing up for the "free" terminals then calling a local BBS that has installed V.23 compatible modems. I wouldn't worry too much. USV and Prodigy are the bottom of the barrel as far as such services go. I think it'll be like when AT&T went into the computer business... all the monopolistic might in the world won't help if you're embedded in the Bell Corporate Culture. SouthWestern Bell *still* hasn't a clue as to what a BBS really is. Peter da Silva. +1 713 274 5180. peter@ferranti.com