bill@trace.eedsp.gatech.edu (10/03/90)
Okay, I'm finally gonna ask. Who, out of all the comp.dcom.telecom
and TELECOM digest readers, is a COCOT owner?
Surely one of us (maybe more) owns one of these detestable devices!
Don't worry, I'm not enquiring to flame - I'd just like to hear your
experiences. I'm sure anyone who reads TELECOM digest would have a
correct and proper programming on their COCOT (if they owned one). :-)
Bill Berbenich
Georgia Tech, Atlanta Georgia, 30332
uucp: ...!{backbones}!gatech!eedsp!bill
Internet: bill@eedsp.gatech.edu
[Moderator's Note: Allright ... come out of the closet and into the
streets, one and all. Admit it if you own one (or more!). Tell us your
side of the story. PAT]john@bovine.ati.com (John Higdon) (10/04/90)
On Oct 4 at 1:35, bill@trace.eedsp.gatech.edu writes: > Okay, I'm finally gonna ask. Who, out of all the comp.dcom.telecom > and TELECOM Digest readers, is a COCOT owner? I will be very surprised to find one single COCOT owner on this forum. COCOT owners are NOT telecom enthusiasts, telephone weirdos (TM), hackers, phreaks, or even telecommunications professionals. They are people who have stumbled on to another way to make a fast buck. They include store owners, groups of investors, individuals who were sucked in on the latest (a few years ago) way to "cash in on the newest investment opportunity". If there were real telecom people owning COCOTs, you wouldn't find such widespread violations. Think about it: would you want to own something that was a technical abortion and a disservice to the public? What I am seeing in the COCOT biz is a few larger companies emerging that own many one-armed bandits. PayTel, ComSystems, etc., seem to be pushing the little guys out of the marketplace --- a lot like the long distance business. And again, I would be very surprised to see anyone at these companies give one jot or tittle about telecommunications. All they care about is that check from the AOS and the cash that falls out of the coinbox. John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 723 1395 john@bovine.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o !
macy@fmsystm.uucp (Macy Hallock) (10/07/90)
John Higdon (Telecom Critic At Large) and others said: >> Okay, I'm finally gonna ask. Who, out of all the comp.dcom.telecom >> and TELECOM Digest readers, is a COCOT owner? >I will be very surprised to find one single COCOT owner on this forum. Well, I came close.... As most of the Digest readers know, I owned (until this week) an interconnect company in Medina, Ohio. Medina is 30 miles outside of Cleveland in GTE-land. Three years ago my brother and I got fed up with GTE's attitude about pay phones ... my father and other brother own a property managment business and had gone through a lot of grief with GTE over pay phones and suggested that we could do a better job. This gave us almost twenty decent locations in Medina to get started in the COCOT business. COCOT's seemed a natural extension of the phone biz for us, so off I went to NATA to look for hardware ... and I found a lot of junk, but a couple of decent phones were actually made. I ordered two types for evaluation, and in they came along with software to permit remote administration. I was now out $3000, 'cuz these guys only deal COD CASH! I played around with the stuff for a few days and installed one in front of our building on a standard business line (GTE did not yet have their COCOT tarriff in place, they had been dragging their feet with the PUCO for two years...) I also started looking at how to deal with credit card and collect calls. That's where I got a reality check ... AOS's were the problem. Credit cards validation was a problem. A small time COCOT operator had to either deal with high priced and somewhat slimey AOS services or not at all. AT&T did not want to talk to me, much less provide any assistance. Sprint and MCI did not have their operator services up to speed at that time. As long as I did local and sent-paid coin calls, COCOT's were OK...but not practical in today's communications environment. GTE would not give me equal access to their services, either. I went back to selling key systems ... and told my father and brother how to file formal PUC complaints against GTE over pay phone problems. (Coming soon ... my attempt to enter the long distance resale business ... another reality check for a small businessman..) Other comments: The communication business is now very different than five years ago. There are only three successful niches left in private CPE telecom: - The very small one or two man key system business. Low margins and very personal service. - The large, customer oriented regional company. Succeeds in quality service, brand name products and a wide range of services. Very marketing oriented. - The large national company. Usually direct sales by the manufacturer. Looking for large, national accounts. Sells with a "safe to deal with" mentality. This tracks with John Higdon's comments about COCOT companies. Note that there is no niche left for the small to medium size telecom specialist. There is now no growth path for the small shop, except to sell out. (BTW - I sold out my PBX business to a larger office automation company, owned by a friend in Cleveland, and now work for him. F M Systems in Medina continues to do alarm work and a few small key systems, just to aggravate GTE... under the auspices of my brother. I help him out on computer issues and spend most of my time in Cleveland on PBX's and phone engineering now. My wife hasn't seen me in a week ...) Macy M. Hallock, Jr. macy@NCoast.ORG uunet!aablue!fmsystm!macy
mbw@unix.cis.pitt.edu (Martin B Weiss) (10/08/90)
In article <13054@accuvax.nwu.edu> John Higdon <john@bovine.ati.com> writes: >I will be very surprised to find one single COCOT owner on this forum. >COCOT owners are NOT telecom enthusiasts, telephone weirdos (TM), >hackers, phreaks, or even telecommunications professionals. They are >people who have stumbled on to another way to make a fast buck. Perhaps more "real people" should be investing in COCOTs as a way to turn around the market abuses. Economic theory would suggest that an correctly programmed phone charging competitive rates placed next to an incorrectly programmed one charging much higher rates would be more successful. Thus, the abusive telephone would see a drop in traffic and revenue, which should cause the owner to reform their errant ways. Martin Weiss Telecommunications Program, University of Pittsburgh Internet: mbw@lis.pitt.edu OR mbw@unix.cis.pitt.edu BITNET: mbw@pittvms
tcora@pica.army.mil (Tom Coradeschi) (10/09/90)
John Higdon <john@bovine.ati.com> writes: >I will be very surprised to find one single COCOT owner on this forum. >COCOT owners are NOT telecom enthusiasts, telephone weirdos (TM), >hackers, phreaks, or even telecommunications professionals. They are >people who have stumbled on to another way to make a fast buck. They >include store owners, groups of investors, individuals who were sucked >in on the latest (a few years ago) way to "cash in on the newest >investment opportunity". I must agree with John. A few years back, I had a roommate who was into Amway. This was gonna make him rich (he was sure of it). One of the Amway rackets was ... you guessed it: COCOTs. I don't think he ever sold one of them, but that gives you an idea of the type of Joe who gets into that business. tom coradeschi <+> tcora@pica.army.mil <+> tcora@dacth01.bitnet [Moderator's Note: Well John, Tom, today you found one here in the Digest. I hope I made your day! PAT]
john@bovine.ati.com (John Higdon) (10/10/90)
On Oct 9 at 2:05, Martin B Weiss <mbw@unix.cis.pitt.edu> writes: > Perhaps more "real people" should be investing in COCOTs as a way to > turn around the market abuses. Economic theory would suggest that an > correctly programmed phone charging competitive rates placed next to > an incorrectly programmed one charging much higher rates would be more > successful. But this is the flaw in the whole concept of COCOTs. In a free market, informed buyers make free and informed choices. So far, this has not been possible with pay phones. First, competing phones are not usually found in close proximity. More and more, you can be assured that if you see a COCOT, a utility phone WON'T be found nearby. This is possibly for the reasons that you cite: the utility phones would, indeed, sap business from a COCOT. But the consumer doesn't control the playing field. If a COCOT owner discovers that a utility phone is causing him trouble, he has it removed -- either directly or by putting pressure on his neighbors. The other side of the coin involves informed choices. There was a time when a Pac*Bell phone and a COCOT were installed side-by-side at a store near Stanford. I stood and watched as one person after another walked up to the COCOT, ignoring the utility phone. Most of these people made simple local calls, but for some reason the COCOT seemed more attractive. (Yes, the Pac*Bell phone worked.) A public phone is supposed to be an instrument of convenience. One doesn't usually walk or drive around "shopping" for the best payphone bargain. Back in pre-MFJ days, it wasn't necessary. John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 723 1395 john@bovine.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o !
mbw@unix.cis.pitt.edu (Martin B Weiss) (10/10/90)
In article <13203@accuvax.nwu.edu> John Higdon <john@bovine.ati.com> professes: >X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 725, Message 3 of 13 >On Oct 9 at 2:05, Martin B Weiss <mbw@unix.cis.pitt.edu> writes: >> Perhaps more "real people" should be investing in COCOTs as a way to >> turn around the market abuses. Economic theory would suggest that an >> correctly programmed phone charging competitive rates placed next to >> an incorrectly programmed one charging much higher rates would be more >> successful. >But this is the flaw in the whole concept of COCOTs. In a free market, >informed buyers make free and informed choices. So far, this has not >been possible with pay phones. >The other side of the coin involves informed choices. There was a time >when a Pac*Bell phone and a COCOT were installed side-by-side at a >store near Stanford. I stood and watched as one person after another >walked up to the COCOT, ignoring the utility phone. Most of these >people made simple local calls, but for some reason the COCOT seemed >more attractive. (Yes, the Pac*Bell phone worked.) >A public phone is supposed to be an instrument of convenience. One >doesn't usually walk or drive around "shopping" for the best payphone >bargain. Back in pre-MFJ days, it wasn't necessary. I agree, John. In fact, the issue of informed choice is much more involved. In a recent paper that I wrote and submitted to the FCC on the NPRM, I argue that informed choice is virtually impossible because of delayed price feedback -- you don't know how much an operator is going to cost until you get the bill, several months later. The literature on the economics of information, such as price search behavior, is based on immediate price feedback (for example, shopping for shoes or baby furniture). It has been able to explain things like price dispersion and the clustering of similar merchants, etc. Even with immediate price feedback, fairly strong information is required of the consumers in many circumstances similar to the AOS case (i.e., where assymetrical information exists). I think that the only real solutions to this problem would lie either in price regulation, as many consumer advocates and legislators suggest, or in requiring a display on telephone instruments that displays to the consumer the cost of the call in progress (or a good estimate thereof). The latter would solve the delayed price feedback problem. The other thing complicating the AOS/COCOT problem is that the competition faced by AOS's is by other AOS's, not by consumers. Thus, we would expect commissions to rise as one AOS tried to get the business of a hotel or COCOT from another AOS, because that is one of the primary modes of competition (of course, there is also competition in service). The only factor that dampens this price spiral is consumer familiarity with a particular telephone or hotel (because, in principle, each owner negotiates a separate deal with the AOS). Once consumers realize that a particular instrument or organization is a rip off, they will avoid it, which tends to moderate the prices. The problem, of course, is with a "new" or unfamiliar instrument. What I meant to suggest in my post is that if enough "ethical" people owned these phones and programmed them correctly, perhaps we could reverse some of the less favorable trends that we all see. Martin Weiss Telecommunications Program, University of Pittsburgh Internet: mbw@lis.pitt.edu OR mbw@unix.cis.pitt.edu BITNET: mbw@pittvms
abm88@ecs.soton.ac.uk (Morley A.B.) (10/10/90)
I'm sorry to ask such a seemingly simple question, bot what are COCOTs? Presumably something we're not blessed with in the UK. Andrew Morley, abm88@uk.ac.soton.ecs [Moderator's Note: COCOT = Customer Owned, Coin Operated Telephone. It is a type of pay telephone operated by a private company instead of the telephone administration. Subject to government regulations (and sometimes despite them!) the owner of the telephone sets the rates and standard of operation. Most are poorly operated and greatly overpriced. They tend to be located in places where more conventional pay telephones are scarce. Despite the fun with words we've been having the past couple days in the Digest, COCOTery and COCOTism are not a philosophy or religous practice. They are, however, a good reason for raising hell. PAT]
yazz@prodnet.la.locus.com (Bob Yasi) (10/11/90)
I spoke to Pac Bell this afternoon about COCOT regulations. 10xxx dialing is not required by the California PUC. I had thought this was what their August billing insert had said and wanted to confirm it before posting. They DID know the PUC complaint number right away, though, and I consider that big progress. That number in California is 800/648-6967. It was busy when I called. So it looks like two changes could be made to the labels -- re 10xxx and this 800 number! By the way, I haven't tried it but is it legally required for those blue AT&T non-coin payphones to let you use Sprint if you want? -- Bob Yazz --
rich@pro-exchange.cts.com (Rich Sims) (10/11/90)
In-Reply-To: message from mbw@unix.cis.pitt.edu > Perhaps more "real people" should be investing in COCOTs as a way to > turn around the market abuses. Economic theory would suggest that an > correctly programmed phone charging competitive rates placed next to > an incorrectly programmed one charging much higher rates would be more > successful. Thus, the abusive telephone would see a drop in traffic > and revenue, which should cause the owner to reform their errant ways. As you say, "economic THEORY"!! That assumes the general public is even aware that there's a difference in the two side-by-side phones. I don't believe that is the case. I suspect the majority of the people who use the phone system think in terms of "_THE_ phone company", and equate that phrase to some string containing the word "Bell". Casual conversations with a number of folks indicate (to me) that aside from the readers of this group, a "very knowledgeable" individual is one who knows that there is more than one L/D carrier available. I also think that if the "general public" were aware of what is really happening, the problem would not be COCOTs and their operators, but more likely, a rash of lynchings and organized vandalism! :-)
wmartin@stl-06sima.army.mil (Will Martin) (10/11/90)
Telecom readers might be interested in the following, related to the recent COCOT discussion: Since Telecom participants kindly provided the 800 numbers to call to request the various flavors of AT&T catalogs, I did so, getting the consumer-goods catalog at home, the big-business datacomm catalog here at work, and the small-business "Sourcebook" using my wife's former business name. In the latter, on pages 106-7, AT&T sells COCOTs. They definitely appeal to greed; the main illustration is a fiendishly-grinning man pulling a box overflowing with quarters out of his own (presumably :-) "AT&T Private Pay Phone Plus". For those that care, this phone costs $995 (plus backboard or enclosure, at various prices and styles). The latest rates downloaded into the phone costs $110 yearly for monthly updates, or $60 bi-monthly. (There's no mention of how the initial rates get loaded if you don't buy this service.) One interesting footnote indicates that there must be COCOT-free areas in the country -- I don't recall ever seeing this mentioned in the Digest. "Legal restrictions prevent the sale of Private Pay Telephones to customers in Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, Hawaii, and Oklahoma." So does that mean that there are no COCOTs in those states? Or does it actually indicate that only the telcos within those states can sell COCOTs, or something else? Regards, Will wmartin@st-louis-emh2.army.mil OR wmartin@stl-06sima.army.mil
langz@eng.sun.com (Lang Zerner) (10/13/90)
In article <13233@accuvax.nwu.edu> yazz@prodnet.la.locus.com (Bob Yasi) writes: X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 727, Message 4 of 11 >[PacBell] DID know the PUC complaint number right away, though, and I >consider that big progress. That number in California is 800/648-6967. The PUC told me that they had delegated the COCOT complaint function to PacBell. The number they gave me (which is on the improved labels) is 800/231-1863. I confirmed that number before putting it on the label by calling and asking the PacBell rep, "Is this the correct number to call to register complaints about customer-owned pay phones in violation of PUC regulations?" She said it was, and that you needed to provide either the phone number or correct street address of the offending device in order to register the complaint. Regarding the 10xxx question, is there anyone who has a copy of the actual regs so we can find out what really needs to go onto the label? Be seeing you... Lang
john@bovine.ati.com (John Higdon) (10/14/90)
On Oct 13 at 10:08, Will Martin <wmartin@stl-06sima.army.mil> writes: > One interesting footnote indicates that there must be COCOT-free areas > in the country -- I don't recall ever seeing this mentioned in the > Digest. "Legal restrictions prevent the sale of Private Pay Telephones > to customers in Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, Hawaii, and Oklahoma." Yes, indeed, there are no COCOTs in these states. How do they get away with it, since it comes down from Federal regulation on high? I don't know. Perhaps someone can tell us how these states, in their infinite wisdom, are allowed to protect citizens from the scourge of mankind when those of us in reputedly more progressive states have to suffer. John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 723 1395 john@bovine.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o !
goldstein@carafe.enet.dec.com (Fred R. Goldstein) (10/15/90)
In article <13505@accuvax.nwu.edu>, john@bovine.ati.com (John Higdon) writes: >On Oct 13 at 10:08, Will Martin <wmartin@stl-06sima.army.mil> writes: >> One interesting footnote indicates that there must be COCOT-free areas >> in the country -- I don't recall ever seeing this mentioned in the >> Digest. "Legal restrictions prevent the sale of Private Pay Telephones >> to customers in Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, Hawaii, and Oklahoma." >Yes, indeed, there are no COCOTs in these states. How do they get away >with it, since it comes down from Federal regulation on high? COCOTs resell local exchange service and intrastate toll calls. Those are within the domain of state regulators, so states have the right to restrict them. If COCOT were configured to _only_ carry interstate calls, then it might be possible to put one in those states too. But most calls are intrastate. Fred R. Goldstein goldstein@carafe.enet.dec.com or goldstein@delni.enet.dec.com voice: +1 508 486 7388