pf@islington-terrace.csc.ti.com (Paul Fuqua) (03/22/90)
Texas Instruments in Dallas is in the process of junking its
aging Centrex service in favor of some Northern Telecom device (I
think a DMS-100), with NT Meridian phones, purveyed by GTE.
Frankly, I'm not sure what TI is getting out of the deal. The
system has the same old features (forward on busy/no-answer, hold,
transfer, 3-way, etc), just with individual buttons. There's the
expense of new phones, new wiring, and training for all users.
There's the hassle that standard answering machines, modems, and the
like won't work with this system. There's the apparently gratuitous
change from 4-digit to 5-digit extension dialing (we can only get to
the one exchange, so why have 5 digits?).
In addition to all the changeover annoyance, the new system has a
real human-factors botch: no tones are generated at the phone when
dialing. Tones are generated after the call connects, but only for a
fixed, short duration, so any remote device that needs long tones
(like many answering machines) is difficult or impossible to access.
How could Northern Telecom let such a stupid mistake out the door?
The most telling comment may be from the GTE lady running the
phone class. It seems that they have the same system in their office,
with the same difficulty in checking remote answering machines. Their
solution: their Fax machine is on an outside line, so they go over and
use its phone.
I do not have much hope that the problem will be resolved.
Paul Fuqua pf@csc.ti.com
{smu,texsun,cs.utexas.edu,rice}!ti-csl!pf
Texas Instruments Computer Science Center
PO Box 655474 MS 238, Dallas, Texas 75265