John Higdon <john@zygot.ati.com> (01/31/90)
Pac*Bell is currently involved in a saturation compaign to promote its
Centrex. There are very expensive-looking television spots, radio
spots, double-page newspaper ads, not to mention the direct mailings.
This represents an unbeliveable amount of money. And for what purpose?
To convince the public that they should forsake the interconnect
industry and allow their kindly phone company to "provide it all".
This is all very disturbing. In the old days, the utility was allowed
to do "informational" or "institutional" advertising to get people to
wait for the dial tone, or to dial correctly (hee-hee), or to not
leave their phone off the hook. In many cases it was required that
this advertising be paid for by stockholders rather than ratepayers.
Now we have the mighty force of a giant public utility that is
guaranteed a rate of return from customers that can't go anywhere else
using its muscle to compete against an industry that itself requires
the services of that utility. So now the ratepayers foot the campaign
to compete against the equipment vendors.
As if that wasn't enough, a frightening mechanism exists to pull shady
and unscrupulous tricks to nudge customers over to Centrex. Since the
company that is pushing Centrex is the same entity that supplies
dialtone to all those vendor-provided phone systems out there, it
might be just a little bit to someone's advantage to provide less than
adequate service to those CPE customers. "Oh, they wouldn't do that",
you say.
They not only would; they do. I have several documented cases where
Pac*Bell has had problem after problem with trunks to customers and
causes are never really pinned down. What does happen, however, is
that Pac*Bell personnel call the customer to "assure" him that the
problem must be in his equipment, while acknowledging to the vendor
that there is some CO problem that they "will look into". And then
SURPRISE! Guess who shows up at the door? You got it--the Centrex
salesperson. I have personally been called out to customers locations
and have been able to vindicate the CPE. Meanwhile the trunk problems
continue, the customer is told that "the phone company" isn't at
fault, and the vendor is led down the garden path.
A friend of mine in the interconnect business found out about
Pac*Bell's "revisionism". One of his customers had trunks that
wouldn't pull dialtone on an intermittant basis. After many days of
on-site time and effort, it was determined that the problem was eleven
originating registers out of spec for loop current. When these
registers were repaired or replaced, the problems went away. Months
later, when the customer was being beat upon by a Centrex salesperson,
the 611 service records were trotted out. Somehow, magically, the bad
CO ORs had turned into "trouble in the CPE". The customer, being
somewhat knowledgeable, threw the Centrex person out. But how many
people would be well enough informed to see through those tactics?
I am steadfastly against using equipment (central office switch gear)
simultaneously for regulated monopoly purposes and a competitive
business, such as Centrex. There is no way the public's interests can
be protected properly either by regulatory bodies or by the public
itself.
For the record, numerous letters have gone to the CPUC concerning this
matter and I have yet to receive any intelligent response. That's
probably asking too much.
John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 723 1395
john@zygot.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o !