forrette@cory.berkeley.edu (Steve Forrette) (10/18/90)
A few months ago, I set out to find out what the REAL story was
regarding COCOTs and equal access. I found out that in California,
Pacific Bell and the PUC have both determinted that the owner of the
COCOT is the "customer" of the service from Pacific Bell's point of
view, and thus is able to choose the default carrier, and to block
access to other carriers at will. 10XXX dialing does not have to be
allowed.
However, one will note that the CPUC only has juristiction over
intra-state calls. To find out about inter-state calls, I checked
with the FCC. After several layers of people, I was able to talk to
an attorney at the FCC that lent me his knowledge for about 45
minutes. He was very knowledgable about COCOTs and the regulations
concerning them - I had obviously reached the right person. As he was
an attorney, his legal expertise was a "little" above that of the
average telecom person.
He stated that as far as the FCC was concerned, that Equal Acess and
10XXX dialing was required from all coin stations, whether owned by
the local carrier, or privately owned. Although the states may allow
as they wish for intra-state calls, *all* payphones must allow 10XXX
(or some similar function if 10XXX is not technically possible on the
set in question) for all inter-state calls, period. Any phone that
does not is in violation of FCC tariffs and perhaps the MFJ.
He said that if a consumer filed a complaint, that a letter would be
sent to the COCOT's owner, stating what the problem was and that it
needed to be fixed. If a satisfactory response was not received
within a resonable time, the matter would be followed up on. If the
COCOT owner fails to correct the problem, the FCC will order the local
carrier to disconnect it. No questions asked. He seemed very
sympathetic to my cause.
Also, we talked about the deal of COCOTs eating money or charging
calling cards for uncompleted calls. We talked about the fact that
real supervision is simply unavailable for local calling, and that
some of the cheesy AOS's may not have the equipment to do it right,
and just use a timeout. He indicated that federal regs required
uncompleted calls not to be charged, period. If the AOS doesn't have
the equipment to deal with it, then they are in violation if they
falsely charge for an uncompleted call that happens to ring too long.
He was of the mentality that "if you don't know much about telephones,
you shouldn't open your own phone company."
I finally had found someone in government that had the "proper"
attitude towards this problem. Unfortunately, time constraints and
apathy prevented me from taking him up on what he said and filing a
complaint. With the recent rekindling of the topic in the Digest,
perhaps I'll do so now. Once I find out the proper address and
procedure to file the FCC complaint, I'll post it.
BTW, when speaking with the COCOT department of Pacific Bell, they
told me that at most only two or three phones had *ever* been
disconnected for tariff violations. I asked how they reconciled this
with the fact that over 99% of them are blatantly *breaking the law*.
"Sir, the PUC sets the policy - we just do what they say." Now get
this, the woman at the PUC said that she would be surprised if the
number of disconnects was even as high as two or three!
Well, the FCC may be our answer. Reminds me of the scene from Die
Hard: "Disconnect the whole power grid? I don't have the authority."
"Authority? How about the United States Government!"
[Moderator's Sunday Sermon: Do you recall the story about Emma
("Mother") Jones, who was one day being interviewed by a newspaper?
She was asked, "What is your occupation?" "My occupation? My
occupation?? I'm a Hell-Raiser," she bellowed. Now I am not going to
change the name of our little journal to the "Mother Jones Digest"
because I'd probably run afoul of the copyright held by the magazine.
Nor would the Mother Bell Digest be a good name ... :) but it does
occur to me that the combined Hell-Raising of Telecom readers who know
the rules and want to see some major reforms in the industry would go
a long way toward getting some changes made.
Despite some comments you have read here (because unlike Kay Graham I
usually print what my detractors say about me) about how we musn't
upset the applecart and offend the 'authorities' by complaining too
loudly or too much, lest they break our network connection, or indict
us all for conspiracy to deprive someone of the use of their mailbox,
email is a good, and powerful tool. Use it to write people. *I won't
tell you what to write about -- or where*. Just write. You know where
to find the names and email addresses of the people who have the
authority to change things. Public Relations and Customer Service
Departments do not have that authority. Write to the people who do,
even though they would probably prefer you write to Public Relations
or Customer Service instead, allowing them to remain in their state of
bliss. Pity their poor secretaries: Instead of simply shielding their
bosses ears from 'inappropriate' phone calls, they'll have to start
screening all the email as well, to make sure some commoner doesn't
send him something to read and think about. :) PAT]