ashbya@uunet.uu.net (Adam J. Ashby) (09/05/90)
>In comp.dcom.telecom, TELECOM Moderator writes: >>Despite the several problems that have arisen since divestiture was >>deemed to be what was good for the American public, the United States >>still has the finest, and most technically complex phone system in the > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > From what I read daily in comp.dcom.telecom, the US definitely does >not have the finest or the most technically complex phone system in >the world. What have you based this sweeping statement on?? Surely >not the all important 'User Satisfaction'? >[Moderator's Note: Alright, fine. If the USA does *not* have what I >described, then what country *does* have it? If TELECOM Digest was >published in East Germany, Poland, Brazil or Haiti, what type of >messages would you see here from day to day? Admittedly, user I don't think that E. Germany, Poland, etc. are fair examples, which is why you you included them. How about the U.K., Eire, West Germany, Sweden and other (Western) European countries. My point was not to say that one country's system is any better than anothers, but to point out to you that in its phone system as well as other areas the U.S. is not still 'the best in the world', most other countries have caught up, the U.S. has been standing still for too long, and as long as it continues to ignore world standards and keep on going its own way, the U.S. will start to lag behind. The U.S. phone system is great, I can get service three days after ordering it, it can take forever in some parts of England, but it is no longer the finest and most technically complex phone system in the world. Just my opinion....I have *absolutely* no facts to back it up....Adam.
HWT@bnr.ca (H.W.) (09/06/90)
In comp.dcom.telecom, TELECOM Moderator writes: >[Moderator's Note: Alright, fine. If the USA does *not* have what I >described, then what country *does* have it? If TELECOM Digest was Canada As still a holdout of monoply telephone systems we have: - excellent service (Bell Canada Ontario Region newsletters says: "There are no CRTC reportables (levels of service not meeting our regulator's standards), and we continue to achieve substantial gains in customer sensitive measures. Our Report Rate of 2.22 is almost 10 per cent better than last year. Similarly, customer complaints per 100,000 accounts of 12.5 for the year by June's end is an improvement of almost 20 per cent over the same period last year." - decent rates - real local service here (one Bell supplied phone, touchtone) is $15.50 Canadian (my data line) - very high percentage of the public that has phones (95+, I think) - an all digital toll network - the toll rate Ottawa to New York is $0.52 per minute prime time, dropping to $0.34 and $0.21 in discount periods. Ottawa to Toronto (500 kilometres) is $0.38/$0.25/$0.15 The discount is 35% 6pm to 11 pm Monday to Friday, and 60% 11 pm to 8 am Monday to Friday and all day Saturday and Sunday - and the headline in the Bell Canada newsletter is "Bell files proposal to reduce LD rates". Obnoxious net.canadian that I am, there's some hard numbers. Henry Troup - BNR owns but does not share my opinions available today uunet!bnrgate!hwt%bwdlh490 HWT@BNR.CA +1 613-765-2337
jwb@monu6.cc.monash.edu.au (Jim Breen) (09/06/90)
> In comp.dcom.telecom, TELECOM Moderator writes: > ........ and we have lost some of > the margin we maintained for decades, but we are still far in front, [1] [2] I cannot see any evidence of the US net either having once had a margin, or of it still being "far in front". Admirable patriotism, Patrick, now how about some evidence. In the best/worst voting, my opinions (based on experience) are: BEST: Japan WORST: India Jim Breen ($B%8%`(J) (jwb@monu6.cc.monash.edu.au) Dept of Robotics & Digital Technology. Monash University PO Box 197 Caulfield East VIC 3145 Australia (ph) +61 3 573 2552 (fax) +61 3 573 2745
mje@ddsw1.mcs.com (Mark J Elkins) (09/06/90)
In article <11661@accuvax.nwu.edu> jwb@monu6.cc.monash.edu.au (Jim Breen) writes: >In article <11635@accuvax.nwu.edu>, telecom@eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM >Moderator) writes: >> ...., the United States >> still has the finest, and most technically complex phone system in the >[2] if you mean most technically advanced, I must ask again for the >evidence. [Moderator's comments....] >surely yours is in second or third place, along with New Zealand, the >UK, and Hong Kong (loud and clear!). Most South American telephone >systems are bad news, as is a lot of the middle east. PAT] The best telephone system I've seen is in ... Botswana. Botswana had British Telecom come down and re-install the complete system from scratch. There are microwave channels everywere. All numbers are six digit - the first two being a 'town' code. (Some towns have more than a single code.) Everything is tone dial - and dialed numbers seem almost to ring before the last number is dialled. Its the only national telephone system were I've seen 'call back on busy' work country-wide. Strangly enough - whilst in Italy - I couldn't get through to Botswana. I needed access to a machine there - so I ended up dialling to my machine in South Africa on one line - and back out to Botswana on another line. From my home phone (in RSA) - If I push 'repeat-dial' - from the time the Touch Tones finish to the time a US phone begins to ring is usually less than three seconds. Olivetti Systems & Networks, Unix Support - Africa UUCP: {uunet,olgb1,olnl1}!olsa99!mje (Mark Elkins) mje@olsa99.UUCP (Postmaster) Tel: +27 11 339 9093
pacolley@violet.uwaterloo.ca (Paul Colley) (09/07/90)
In article <90Sep5.150411edt.57361@ugw.utcs.utoronto.ca> HWT@bnr.ca (H.W.) writes: X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 625, Message 6 of 13 >In comp.dcom.telecom, TELECOM Moderator writes: >>[Moderator's Note: Alright, fine. If the USA does *not* have what I >>described, then what country *does* have it? >Canada Canada may not be best, but it's better than the USA. I'd like to add a couple of points: >- decent rates - real local service here (one Bell supplied phone, touchtone) > is $15.50 Canadian (my data line) I pay $8.50/month for my phone line (still pulse, despite Bell's frequent pamphlets on the $1.70/month benefits of touch tone). No Bell supplied phones. My rate would be cheaper than Henry's mainly because of living in Waterloo instead of (I assume) Ottawa, since there are fewer phones in my local calling area. >- very high percentage of the public that has phones (95+, I think) In a recent newspaper article (Toronto Star) I remember as quoting over 99%, contrasting it with a much lower figure for the USA. Henry forgot to mention a couple of other points: - Free long distance directory assistance. - There are several discount packages available that can reduce your long distance bill substantially. - Benefits for the handicapped. Free voice/teletype conversions for the deaf, many payphones with volume adjustments for the hearing impaired, free local directory assistance if you have vision or physical problems, etc. - Phone bills under $50.00 don't have to be paid immediately. I.e., I only have to pay every second or third bill, given my usual long distance usage of $15-$20/month. One month and 11 days to pay bills over $50.00 - No COCOTs. If competition is so wonderful for the consumer, why do you need regulations on COCOTs? My personal opinion (no doubt about to be flamed :-) is that competition hasn't been so wonderful for the consumer in the states. And one somewhat unrelated note: - I'm not a big hotel user, but every hotel I've been into in Canada has free phone service for calls that are free to the hotel (local, calling card, etc.). Every hotel I've been into in the states has charged lots of $$$ for every call. (One hotel in Canada had two-line speaker phones in the rooms!) However, things may be changing. According to the {Toronto Star}, a company is going to petition the CRTC to set up a competing long distance carrier. They want permission to charge (from memory) 85% of the long distance fee and pay local subsidization at 70% of the rate Bell pays. In my opinion, if lower long distance rates from less subsidization to local service is "good" (I don't think so), they should just let Bell do it; Bell has wanted to for years now. And that seems to be what the proposed competition plans to do, pocketing an additional profit. Canada is much more thinly spread than the United States. I wonder if the competition plans to offer much support to the vast majority of the country. "Moose Jaw? Dial 10288 before your number to place your call through the real phone company, we only support Toronto/Montreal/ Ottawa/Vancouver..." I've seen and heard about the competition. I like our monopoly. - Paul pacolley@violet.waterloo.edu or .ca [Moderator's Note: I liked our monopoly here in the United States also, and it appears, based on consumer organization polls that people here are finally beginning to wise up to the problems with divestiture. I have no problem with competition: let people use whatever service they want; but why was AT&T smashed to pieces in the process? PAT]
rees@pisa.ifs.umich.edu (Jim Rees) (09/08/90)
I've been to, and used the phone system in, about 40 countries in the last two years. The Best: USA, Hong Kong, Singapore The Worst: India, Vietnam, Indonesia None: Laos (they don't have phones outside the big city!) My biggest complaint with USA phone system right now is that it's very hostile to outsiders. The multitude of long distance companies is confusing to someone used to the telephone monopolies of other countries, and there is no provision for non-subscribers to pay for phone calls. AT&T won't give a credit card to someone who has no phone. Here is an exercise for you Americans. Imagine yourself standing on a street corner downtown in your city with nothing but lots of cash and a Visa card. You do not have a "home phone" in this country. You don't want to make the callee pay for the call. How would you make a long distance phone call? Remember, most of the world will cost you on the order of $3 a minute. That's 12 coins of the largest denomination accepted by a pay phone. Here are two ideas from other countries to make the USA phone system more usable to outsiders (that includes me, and I live here!): Do away with coin-operated phones. Replace them with phones that take a smart card. They should take both pre-pay cards (available at any corner market for $10, $20, etc) and telephone credit cards. Make meters easily and cheaply available. You go in to a bar and want to make a phone call. The bartender writes down the meter reading, you make your call, and pay for the number of units you used. One or both of these systems are widely used throughout Europe and Asia, and it makes life a lot easier.
gutierre@nsipo.nasa.gov (09/08/90)
> I've been to, and used the phone system in, about 40 countries in the > last two years. > The Best: USA, Hong Kong, Singapore > The Worst: India, Vietnam, Indonesia > My biggest complaint with USA phone system right now is that it's very > hostile to outsiders. The multitude of long distance companies is > confusing to someone used to the telephone monopolies of other > countries, and there is no provision for non-subscribers to pay for > phone calls. AT&T won't give a credit card to someone who has no > phone. Ahh, but the current situation has become much better than in the past. Back when American Telephone and Telegraph ruled the states, there were *no* phones with major credit card access, or alternate L.D. companies who you could order so-called "stand-alone" calling card accounts. AT&T, as far as they were concerned, didn't think you exisited if you lived outside the USA or were not in the armed services. > Here are two ideas from other countries to make the USA phone system > more usable to outsiders (that includes me, and I live here!): > Do away with coin-operated phones. Replace them with phones that take > a smart card. They should take both pre-pay cards (available at any > corner market for $10, $20, etc) and telephone credit cards. This is an excellent idea that AT&T should have adopted before `ol Harry broke them up (that's Judge Harold "Equal Access" Greene to you!). But this is now impossible with the poliferation of the one-armed bandits ...errr ... COCOTS, and different Long Distance companies now. Japan can (and did) do this, but only because they were (at the time) a monopoly. They didn't have to fight with X amount of COCOT mfgr's or X amount of AOS carriers or L.D. companies or X amount of local telco's, etc ... you get the idea. The best we can hope for now is an Automated Teller/Instant Teller debit card system that *maybe* some L.D. carrier would implement, and allow the public at large (or at least the ones who hold such cards) to use their services casually. This will at least allow some people from other major countries to use the services here. This, of course, doesn't even come close to the open access that NTT/Japan allows through the use of their telephone debit cards. I have three NTT 50 unit telephone cards myself (given as a gift to me ... they have my favorite Japanese cartoon characters on them). I can only look at them and wonder in frustration why there was never a similiar system here. Robert Michael Gutierrez Office of Space Science and Applications, NASA Science Internet - Network Operations Center. Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California.
John Higdon <john@bovine.ati.com> (09/09/90)
Jim Breen <jwb@monu6.cc.monash.edu.au> writes: > In the best/worst voting, my opinions (based on experience) are: > BEST: Japan > WORST: India Bzzzzt! Wrong -- but thanks for playing anyway. Without getting into the "US is best" fray, I can categorically state that Japan does NOT have the worlds best telephone service, unless there are criteria that I am missing. * No itemized billing (not even for "Dial-Q", Japan's 900 equivalent) * About one out of ten calls bomb (don't go through). * Long distance within Japan "sounds" like long distance. * Digital services are just being introduced. * Outside plant is pathetic and inadequate. * Even though the system is "privatized", it is run like a government bureaucracy. * You get to hear the "meter pulses" on many calls. I don't know where the US fits on the scale, but it certainly is higher up on the food chain telephonically than Japan. Sources: close associates who live and work in Japan. John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 723 1395 john@bovine.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o !
roy@alanine.phri.nyu.edu (Roy Smith) (09/09/90)
gutierre@nsipo.nasa.gov writes: > This is an excellent idea that AT&T should have adopted before `ol Harry > broke them up (that's Judge Harold "Equal Access" Greene to you!). The sentiment has been expressed long and loud (perhaps longest and loudest by our esteemed Moderator) that Judge Greene did some evil thing to AT&T, forcing them to break up. Yet, I have heard the idea put forth from time to time that AT&T actually (at least in part) engineered the breakup themselves. They wanted to be able to shuck off the unprofitable local telcos and keep the long-distance and manufacturing cash cows, as well as branch out into areas they were formally prohibited from, such as computers and consumer electronics, not to mention comsumer credit. Any comments? (Throw a statement like that into the telecom shark pool and wonder if you'll get any nibbles? Yeah, right). Roy Smith, Public Health Research Institute 455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016 roy@alanine.phri.nyu.edu -OR- {att,cmcl2,rutgers,hombre}!phri!roy [Moderator's Note: While it is true that AT&T 'engineered the breakup themselves', they did so only once it was quite apparent that they were not going to get away intact, allowed to keep their property. A very sexist slogan says, "If you know you are going to get raped and cannot do anything about it, then you may as well lay back and enjoy it." That is sort of what happened here. PAT]
jwb@monu6.cc.monash.edu.au (Jim Breen) (09/10/90)
In article <11895@accuvax.nwu.edu>, john@bovine.ati.com (John Higdon) writes: > Jim Breen <jwb@monu6.cc.monash.edu.au> writes: > > In the best/worst voting, my opinions (based on experience) are: > > BEST: Japan > > WORST: India > Bzzzzt! Wrong -- but thanks for playing anyway. Without getting into > the "US is best" fray, I can categorically state that Japan does NOT > have the worlds best telephone service, unless there are criteria that > I am missing. > * No itemized billing (not even for "Dial-Q", Japan's 900 equivalent) True, but then I was used to this. > * About one out of ten calls bomb (don't go through). Not on my observation. > * Long distance within Japan "sounds" like long distance. In my experience much less so than in the US. > * Digital services are just being introduced. Whereas the US is *completely* digital? > * Outside plant is pathetic and inadequate. Not in my experience. > * Even though the system is "privatized", it is run like a government > bureaucracy. Whereas AT&T was a paragon of lean and mean private enterprise. Anyway, an irrelevant point. > * You get to hear the "meter pulses" on many calls. I haven't noticed. > Sources: close associates who live and work in Japan. So have I. Jim Breen ($B%8%`(J) (jwb@monu6.cc.monash.edu.au) Dept of Robotics & Digital Technology. Monash University PO Box 197 Caulfield East VIC 3145 Australia (ph) +61 3 573 2552 (fax) +61 3 573 2745
goldstein@carafe.enet.dec.com (Fred R. Goldstein) (09/10/90)
>[Moderator's Note: I liked our monopoly here in the United States >also, and it appears, based on consumer organization polls that people >here are finally beginning to wise up to the problems with >divestiture. I have no problem with competition: let people use >whatever service they want; but why was AT&T smashed to pieces in the >process? PAT] Disregarding our eternal disagreement about my personal hero, Harold Greene, competition is not a simple binary state {competition | monopoly}. Before Carterfone, AT&T's utter monopoly meant that you could only buy their modems, $25/month for a 300-baud "Dataphone" clunker. You could only buy their PBXs, mechanical clunkers. Technology was intentionally slowed down to meet long depreciation schedules. (Anybody remember what it cost to have an answering machine? You don't want to know.) Competitive provision of terminal gear has been absolutely vital to the development of telecom, computer and especially datacomm technology. While there's a lot of junk on the market, I'm beginning to see a reaction; "real" metal-base ITT (Alcatel Cortelco) phones are back in one large local store (You-Do-It), for instance, and the one-piece junkers are less common. Competitive provision of long distance hasn't changed the technology as much, but it did force AT&T to go digital faster than they would have. And it led to MUCH lower rates for the private lines that datacomm depends upon, the introduction of T1 and T3 services, etc. In the old days rates were totally divorced from economic cost. That's economically inefficient. Look at Soviet supermarkets for an extreme case of mis-pricing. Naturally, the FCC went too far. They allowed COCOTs, for example, to rip us off, along with hotels. That isn't true competition; it's usually taking advantage of a local monopoly. The divestiture rules were also not designed to help consumers. The theory is "market allocation" -- reserve much of the market for AT&T Comms & those under their umbrella, by taking it away from the Bells. That little scheme was cooked up by AT&T's top brass as a way around an antitrust case based on WeCo equipment. We were screwed, but not by the presence of competition; rather, we were screwed by the prohibition of "competition" for some services by the Bells. (Greene weakened the original deal; it could have been a lot worse.) Still, it's a heck of a lot cheaper for everything _but_ POTS down here, compared to Canada. There are ways to maintain subsidies (needed) in a competitive market. I hope they don't throw out the baby with the bathwater, but monopolization isn't the solution. Fred R. Goldstein goldstein@carafe.enet.dec.com or goldstein@delni.enet.dec.com voice: +1 508 486 7388 opinions are mine alone; sharing requires permission
0004133373@mcimail.com (Donald E. Kimberlin) (09/11/90)
In article <digest v10,iss627>, one of our Canadian readers reports on several good points of Bell Canada, and the perplexing horrors US demonopolization and deregulation have caused. He says: >I've seen and heard about the competition. I like our monopoly. To which, our Moderator replies: >[Moderator's Note: I liked our monopoly here in the United States >also, and it appears, based on consumer organization polls that people >here are finally beginning to wise up to the problems with >divestiture. I have no problem with competition: let people use >whatever service they want; but why was AT&T smashed to pieces in the >process? PAT] ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Indeed? WHY would the US take such a major step to literally disembowel an institution like AT&T? Especially one that operates something as near and dear to the heart of every (US) American as "the phone?" It does seem to be beyond belief, doesn't it? I submit it was caused by utter corporate arrogance toward the Federal government. I, for one, received the "word" my very FIRST day on the job at AT&T Long Lines in 1962. It was, in words I recall to be very direct, something like, "Look, we have gotten so big and so indispensable to America that the "regulation" story is a myth. We decide what's good for them and tell them how we have chosen to do it and how much they are going to pay for it." THAT, dear readers, was 22 years BEFORE the Feds killed Ma Bell. And the man who gave me that lecture was, I can assure you a fine person ... but he already knew what had transpired. He cited how AT&T had made the Feds give up in 1958 by flooding them with paper; indicating they would do it again if challenged. But, the "trade secret" of the buggy-whip technology called "the phone" wasn't secure enough. Lots of people began to figure out bits and pieces of it. And, one thing NOBODY dares is to get arrogant with the Feds, not even AT&T. They may go away, but like the Indians in the Western films, they will come back over that hill later. And, the Feds did. By the Kennedy era, smart young folks were going to work for the Federal Government, and they learned how to ask questions and analyze the answers. Their investigations uncovered an incredible array of abuses of the 1913 monopoly; things that in large part technology advances had already made possible, items for which the public was being charged prices that were unconscionable. One item of thousands: the SAME wire pair between the SAME two buildings might have a dozen prices on it, depending on what you used it for. And, a hospital paid far more than the press service to send the SAME kind of electrical signals down that wire! Bell's best answer to questions like that was, "Because I'm the Mommy, that's why! Go away!" Charles de Gaulle once said, "Regimes do not reform themselves," and like to admit it or not, AT&T had indeed become a regime. When the Feds did come back over the hill, they were armed to the teeth, and Ma Bell simply had no good answers. Students of the detail of the antitrust court case (including its back room negotiations) know that AT&T's Chairman Charles Brown (in classic Bell style, how could an American deny a name like that?) finally realized the risk of further protraction was greater than suing for peace. One item of the original attack was to divest AT&T's incredible vertical integration of local phone companies, long distance, technology development and manufacturing supply. Brown had to make some hard decisions about what to keep and what to cut loose. Ma Bell, actually hoisted by her own petard of technology, committed hari-kari. But, like good sci-fi, she exploded into nine pieces that live today. A lot of her DNA still runs through their veins. And, even though the explosion should cause change, may of her bone fragments impacted into the very firms she spawned as "competition," be it other long distance firms or cellular telephones or PBX interconnects. Hormones are tough to fight off. Old ways die hard, dear friends. In the case of the Bell System, life behind Ma Bell's skirts was very comfortable indeed ... complacent workers, a complacent management and too much easy money combined to create a pleasant daily and lifelong working elixir .. one very few would ever give up willingly. Now, Dear Moderator, you yourself are a lifelong resident of one of the more visibly nefarious children of Ma Bell ... Illinois Bell. You even print in here how they still are caught committing illegal acts with the Illinois regulators. Is your denial level really that high? It must be, and I think that indicates how all of us with a memory of that time were addicted, glossing over bad memories and still not wanting to believe there is no genetic thread of them left today. If anything, I think our observers from other nations have been fed a similar dose of Ma Bell's magic elixir, and the very thought of going "cold turkey" scares them silly. Worse yet, your note quoted above shows a tendency to want the elixir again, rather than face up to the larger world and become a participant of it. Are you falling off the wagon of telecomm sobriety, Patrick? Want someone else to become your co-dependent again? <Now stepping down off soapbox and putting on flameproof suit. If challenged, I can fill five or more Digests with abuses of the public trust that only one*small*individual observed and even participated in ... but they never made an addict of me!> (Recovering addicts would do well to read a few books. I note one sociologist accuses us of having lost the "discipline to learn from history." It shows often in posts on here. I suggest: Garnet, Robert W., "The Telephone Enterprise," Johns Hopkins Press, 1985; Tunstall, W. Brooke, "Disconnecting Parties," 1985, McGraw-Hill; Numerous articles and reports in the trade press of 1984-86. Serious reading will cure in the classic manner of curing addiction; "Are you ready to look at what you DID. Are you yet ready to say, " I will NEVER do that to my mind and body AGAIN?'")
chris@com50.c2s.mn.org (Chris Johnson) (09/11/90)
In article <11911@accuvax.nwu.edu> gutierre@nsipo.nasa.gov writes: X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 631, Message 5 of 7 >> I've been to, and used the phone system in, about 40 countries in the >> last two years. >> The Best: USA, Hong Kong, Singapore >> The Worst: India, Vietnam, Indonesia >> My biggest complaint with USA phone system right now is that it's very >> hostile to outsiders. The multitude of long distance companies is >> confusing to someone used to the telephone monopolies of other >> countries, and there is no provision for non-subscribers to pay for >> phone calls. AT&T won't give a credit card to someone who has no >> phone. Well, maybe you'd be in trouble on just any street corner, but in all the traveling I've done in the last year or so, I've noticed that there are credit card operated telephones in all the airports and most major hotels. These will take VISA/Mastercharge/American Express/etc. etc. so at least if one has one major credit card, and are not stuck in Podunk, Iowa, then you could probably make a toll call to just about anywhere. Of course, there is tremendous room for improvement for the average private consumer of telephone service. I doubt that any other country provides the myriad of telephone options to businesses that are available in the U.S. ...Chris Johnson chris@c2s.mn.org ..uunet!bungia!com50!chris Com Squared Systems, Inc. St. Paul, MN USA +1 612 452 9522
dave%westmark@uunet.uu.net (Dave Levenson) (09/11/90)
In article <11894@accuvax.nwu.edu>, rees@pisa.ifs.umich.edu (Jim Rees) writes: > I've been to, and used the phone system in, about 40 countries in the > last two years. ... > Here is an exercise for you Americans. Imagine yourself standing on a > street corner downtown in your city with nothing but lots of cash and > a Visa card. You do not have a "home phone" in this country. You > don't want to make the callee pay for the call. How would you make a > long distance phone call? I would look for a multi-carrier public phone, and insert that VISA card, and dial away... Seriously, several of the toll carriers accept VISA, MasterCard, and American Express in payment for toll calls. Dave Levenson Voice: 908 647 0900 Fax: 908 647 6857 Westmark, Inc. UUCP: {uunet | rutgers | att}!westmark!dave Warren, NJ, USA AT&T Mail: !westmark!dave [The Man in the Mooney]
swu@seeker.uucp (Shawn Wu) (09/12/90)
In article <11894@accuvax.nwu.edu> you write: > AT&T won't give a credit card to someone who has no phone. I don't know if they still are, but at one point, AT&T was issuing cards to students without requiring a phone. The reasoning was that a student tends to move around a lot while going through school and his or her phone number wouldn't necessarily be the same. That's how I got my card. I even still have the "AT&T: The right choice" frisbee they were giving away just to sign up. And technically, I personally don't have a phone. (Living with parents is cheaper while going to school. :) ) And every month, I get a bill in the mail from AT&T. Shawn Wu swu@seer.UUCP ...!uunet!seeker!seer!swu
jimmy@denwa.info.com (Jim Gottlieb) (09/12/90)
In article <11941@accuvax.nwu.edu> jwb@monu6.cc.monash.edu.au (Jim Breen) writes: [>> comments are those of John Higdon] >> > In the best/worst voting, my opinions (based on experience) are: >> > BEST: Japan >> Bzzzzt! Wrong -- but thanks for playing anyway. >> * About one out of ten calls bomb (don't go through). >Not on my observation. I would say it may even be higher. These bombed calls take two forms. Either the call just sits there and does nothing, or you get a "The number you have dialed is not in service" recording. I verify that this is not user error by using my last-number-redial to try again. The second time is usually the charm. Interestingly, I can't ever recall reaching a wrong number. >> * Long distance within Japan "sounds" like long distance. >In my experience much less so than in the US. Only if you use bogus carriers here in the U.S. While Sprint's network is 100% digital and AT&T's is 99% digital, NTT's is far less. I read recently in the {Japan Times} that NTT has announced that they plan to have their long-distance network all digital by the year 2000; 10 years ahead of their original schedule. And consider the fact that the foreign exchange lines we have in our office don't even use digital carrier for the CO-to-CO portion. They are run on metallic pairs all the way from the originating C.O. to our office. The quality is so bad they are barely usable. >> * Outside plant is pathetic and inadequate. >Not in my experience. Definitely pathetic! The cable they use is so thin that we have serious crosstalk problems. And cable is so inadequate that in most places in Tokyo, if you want more than a few lines, you may have to wait up to a year for service. This problem is exacerbated by the current labor shortage. NTT claims they just don't have the manpower to run all the new cable they need to. And hiring foreign workers is not socially acceptable (see soc.culture.japan). >> * Even though the system is "privatized", it is run like a government >> bureaucracy. >Whereas AT&T was a paragon of lean and mean private >enterprise. Anyway, an irrelevant point. The point is that NTT feels like the old Bell System, where no one goes out of their way to make things better for the customer. >> * You get to hear the "meter pulses" on many calls. >I haven't noticed. I'm not sure when it happens. I almost never hear them on calls within Tokyo, but listen to some of the people on our party lines or some of the messages left on our voice personals services and every five to eighteen seconds, you hear "ka-chink, ka-chunk". >> Sources: close associates who live and work in Japan. >So have I. My source: Myself. I live there. >Jim Breen ($B%8%`(J) ^^^^^^^^ Ahh, but he has Japanese in his .signature. That increases his qualifications a bit.
bakerj@ncar.ucar.edu (Jon Baker) (09/12/90)
In article <11894@accuvax.nwu.edu>, rees@pisa.ifs.umich.edu (Jim Rees) writes: >there is no provision for non-subscribers to pay for phone calls. Sure there is -- get a huge bag full of quarters. >on the order of $3 a minute. That's 12 coins of the largest >denomination accepted by a pay phone. So bring back the SBA dollar, or put currency-eaters on pay phones. In article <11911@accuvax.nwu.edu>, gutierre@nsipo.nasa.gov writes: > > Do away with coin-operated phones. Replace them with phones that take > > a smart card. > This is an excellent idea that AT&T should have adopted before `ol > Harry broke them up (that's Judge Harold "Equal Access" Greene to > you!) (sure that wasn't Judge Harry T. Stone?) > But this is now impossible with the poliferation of the > one-armed bandits ...errr ... COCOTS, and different Long Distance > companies now. Not at all impossible - if Judge Greene decrees, it shall be so. Jon Baker
john@bovine.ati.com (John Higdon) (09/13/90)
Dave Levenson <dave%westmark@uunet.uu.net> writes: > In article <11894@accuvax.nwu.edu>, rees@pisa.ifs.umich.edu (Jim Rees) > writes: > > Here is an exercise for you Americans. Imagine yourself standing on a > > street corner downtown in your city with nothing but lots of cash and > > a Visa card. You do not have a "home phone" in this country. You > > don't want to make the callee pay for the call. How would you make a > > long distance phone call? > I would look for a multi-carrier public phone, and insert that VISA > card, and dial away... Which reminds me of why many Americans don't experience such problems in other countries. They carry a card which is accepted for telephone calls around the world. It's called the AT&T Calling Card. It works because AT&T established agreements with countless foreign telecom agencies. It works from hotels, public phones -- U-name-it. So before anyone starts bashing the US for having foreigner-unfriendly phones, how 'bout asking your home telephone provider why they don't issue a card that works in the US? There's more than one side to this story... John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 723 1395 john@bovine.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o !
0004133373@mcimail.com (Donald E. Kimberlin) (09/13/90)
Mark reports: >The best telephone system I've seen is in ... Botswana. I believe it, Mark. What most people cannot believe is that the nations that had a poor, antiquated public network, tend to rebuild with the latest and best when they do. I recall putting the latest generation TDM's running high-speed sync modems on lines in countries Americans couldn't believe that of ... including Botswana. (In fact, life in Gaborones was so pleasant to me that I still think of retiring there. Nice to know the phones are up to snuff now!) Mark continues: >whilst in Italy - I couldn't get through to Botswana...so I ended >up dialling to my machine in South Africa...and back out to Botswana. Later <in Digest vol10,iss628> Mark writes: >Talk about routing... >How many other non-USA countries use BT to do routing to Kuwait? Probably most all, Mark. The simple economic fact is that until or unless the volume of traffic directly between two nations is profitable, "transit calls" are run via a third country. The practice is very common, and has been for years. >I wonder if this implies that any country that South Africa >does not route directly to is routed via BT? While BT probably gets the lion's share, others that have more direct links to places of interest are likely as well. Paris for francophone countries or Madrid for Spanish lands are likely examples. Sometimes, telecommunications transits are surprising. Here's one I bet no one would ever expect: Sitting in the hotel room In Lusaka, Zambia, waiting through the 8-hour delay quoted on calls to the US, my phone finally rang, and I heard the Zambian operator on line saying, "OK, Johannesburg, I have the party on line for ticket nnnnn now..go ahead, party." Just even try to mail a letter between Lusaka and Jo'burg! Telecomm may make stranger bedfellows than politics! (If you want to know more about details of international telephone routing, look into special reports of the CCITT. They detail trunk and transit liaisons, minutes of traffic carried, and forecasts on both. The CCITT "plan" is what telephone people the world around work from ... another function of the "standards body.") Then in article <Digestv10,iss636> Dale Nieburg writes of 911 dialing errors in rural West Virginia and the persistent "wall of denial" answers of C&P Telephone. This illustrates so well that despite supposed "jolts" of the breakup that Telcos cry about, minds INSIDE local Telcos still have not changed. The "monopoly mentality" still prevails there. C&P's answer, "Just wait for the new switching machine," is best classed as "Telephone Man's Stock Put-Off Number 54-B." What amazes me, as Dale's notes in the quote point up, is HOW the public continues to gobble such trash. 1.) WHY doesn't anyone ask them how the new machine is going to fix the cable pairs C&P points to as the probable cause? (C&P must have secretly developed "intelligent cable" somewhere in West Virginia; cable pairs that can dial digits meaningfully...now, there MUST be a marketplace opportunity in that somehow!) Cable that can dial digits is Telephone Man's Stock Put-Off Number 13-C. 2.) WHY doesn't anybody ASK C&P just WHO is responsible for that piece of cable they keep intimating is the subscriber's responsibility? Denying responsibility for their own plant is Telephone Man's Stock Put-Off Number 33-D. 3.) The marvelous twist of logic about assigning ONE person in the user organization to track the trouble reports is yet another aspect of the "monopoly mentality." Within the confines of a single sentence, the problem of multiple people inside the Telco gets thrown back around into a management problem the customer is supposed to be overseeing. Telling the customer they should keep track of a recurrent case is Telephone Man's Stock Put-Off Number of 8-B. The bottom line of all this is that while our Moderator thinks all the problems of divestiture should have been solved three years ago, many of the very causes of the Lynching of Ma Bell still circulate around her corpse. Don't blame our government for that, too, Dear Moderator!
jwb@monu6.cc.monash.edu.au (Jim Breen) (09/14/90)
In article <12064@accuvax.nwu.edu>, jimmy@denwa.info.com (Jim Gottlieb) writes in support of comments by John Higdon disagreeing with my vote: > >> > In the best/worst voting, my opinions (based on experience) are: > >> > BEST: Japan > >> Bzzzzt! Wrong -- but thanks for playing anyway. > >> * About one out of ten calls bomb (don't go through). > >Not on my observation. > I would say it may even be higher. ...... [etc.etc.etc.] At this point I crawl back under my stone. I could try and argue point by point, but anecdotal "evidence" isn't worth much anyway. I suppose I will just have to accept that I lead a charmed existence when in Japan, whilst in the US I just happen to get more than my share of lousy lines, rude operators, failed connections, international lines with broken eco-suppression, etc. etc. > >Jim Breen ($B%8%`(J) > Ahh, but he has Japanese in his .signature. That increases his > qualifications a bit. $B$"$"!"F|K\8l$,>e<j$@$h!#(J Jim Breen ($B%8%`(J) (jwb@monu6.cc.monash.edu.au) Dept of Robotics & Digital Technology. Monash University PO Box 197 Caulfield East VIC 3145 Australia (ph) +61 3 573 2552 (fax) +61 3 573 2745
laird@slum.mv.com (Laird Heal) (09/18/90)
In article <12104@accuvax.nwu.edu>, 0004133373@mcimail.com (Donald E. Kimberlin) writes: >In article <digest v10,iss627>, one of our Canadian readers reports on >To which, our Moderator replies: >>whatever service they want; but why was AT&T smashed to pieces in the >>process? PAT] ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ [accord with emphasized text omitted] > I submit it was caused by utter corporate arrogance toward the >Federal government. Um, have your telephone bills gone DOWN since divestiture? The breakup allowed the now-independent subsidiaries to enter and compete in other fields of business. Where did the monies used to invest in those other business activities come from? Were the shareholders' dividends reduced? > When the Feds did come back over the hill, they were armed to the >teeth, and Ma Bell simply had no good answers. Students of the detail IBM fought off their case. Ma may have reached out and touched more of the citizens, but they both have high thrones. > Ma Bell, actually hoisted by her own petard of technology, committed >hari-kari. But, like good sci-fi, she exploded into nine pieces that >live today. A lot of her DNA still runs through their veins. And, Once she found out what Uncle Sam was doing, she discovered she liked it. While the Bell system might have held onto long-distance primacy more creatively, as you point out local lines are still locked up as tight as a drum. > Now, Dear Moderator, you yourself are a lifelong resident of one of >the more visibly nefarious children of Ma Bell ... Illinois Bell. You I spent last year living in Cook County with Ameritech's service. Each call carries a charge, even if only $.03. Finding out how much a call will cost or did cost is painful when possible. Service was reasonable but, for instance, my nickel call to Tymnet was fraught with static. I could make a long-distance call to South Bend Indiana at 14.4Kbps while the five-mile one-hop link could not maintain 1200 bps. Here in New Hampshire things are much better, although the line costs a little more. The 'local' calling area runs about 15 miles each way. I also, to consternate the LATA-holics, am listed in a Massachusetts phone book and dial at least a dozen 508 exchanges in seven digits from 603. ><Now stepping down off soapbox and putting on flameproof suit. If >challenged, I can fill five or more Digests with abuses of the public >trust that only one*small*individual observed and even participated in > ... but they never made an addict of me!> Don't send them to this Digest - write a book, then get a lawyer to edit the unprintables out, get a ghostwriter to add some drama and a comic artist for comic relief, and call it "Ma Bell on the Half Shell". Laird Heal laird@slum.MV.COM (Salem, NH) +1 603 898 1406
vic@cs.arizona.edu (Vicraj T. Thomas) (09/20/90)
In article <12062@accuvax.nwu.edu>, john@bovine.ati.com (John Higdon) writes: > Which reminds me of why many Americans don't experience such problems > in other countries. They carry a card which is accepted for telephone > calls around the world. It's called the AT&T Calling Card. It works > because AT&T established agreements with countless foreign telecom > agencies. It works from hotels, public phones -- U-name-it. I was in the transit lounge of the Tokyo airport this summer and wanted to call somebody in the city. I didn't have any yen with me but I did have my AT&T calling card. There were two kinds of phones in the lounge -- regular KDD (did I get the name right?) phones that took coins and the KDD debit card and a USADirect phone. I talked to a KDD operator using the USADirect phone but she said I couldn't use my AT&T calling card or my Visa to make a local call. I got the same answer from the regular KDD phone. So Mr. Higdon, the AT&T card is not as "universal" as you might think. It is however a great card to have for calling the US from almost anywhere in the world, including India which was a runner-up for this newsgroups "Worst Telecom Network in the World" award. If I was going to be in Japan for longer than the hour and a half at the airport, I could have easily bought a KDD debit card and made all the local calls I wanted. Try getting a calling card in the USA without a "permanent" address. vic@cs.arizona.edu Dept. of Computer Science ..!{uunet|noao}!arizona!vic University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721
penguin@gnh-igloo.cts.com (Mark Steiger) (09/20/90)
I was over in Russia about a month ago. I think they had the worst phone system. Local calls sounded worse than when I called home!! Go figure... Mark Steiger, Sysop, The Igloo 218/262-3142 300/1200/2400 baud ProLine.:penguin@gnh-igloo America Online: Goalie5 UUCP....:crash!gnh-igloo!penguin MCI Mail......: MSteiger Internet:penguin@gnh-igloo.cts.com ARPA....:crash!gnh-igloo!penguin@nosc.mil