[comp.dcom.telecom] BOCs and Regionals

crew@Polya.Stanford.EDU (Roger Crew) (08/23/89)

>> What's wrong with this picture?
>> Iowa is served by SouthWestern Bell.  I grew up there; my uncle
>> worked for SW Bell.  I'm quite sure this hasn't changed in the past
>> 10 yrs.  :-)
>
> Well, sorry to say this, but I was just in Spirit Lake Iowa yesterday, and
> called back to work on a pay phone that wanted 35 cents and also had a VERY
> large logo marked "US West Telecommunications" on it.

Doubtless, my memory is at least as faulty as anyone else's, but my
recollection has Minnesota, Iowa, North & South Dakota all being served by
NorthWestern Bell, which upon divestiture became a subsidiary of US West.

While we're at it, maybe we should settle all of these questions in one swell
foop.  Here's my attempt:

NYNEX
  New England Telephone  (Maine, NH, VT, Mass, RI)
  New York Telephone

Bell Atlantic
  New Jersey Bell
  Bell of Pennsylvania
  Chesapeake & Patomic   (Maryland, DC, VA?)

Bell South
  Southern Bell		 (NC, SC, GA, FL)
  South Central Bell     (KE, TN, Mississippi, AL)

Ameritech
  Ohio Bell
  Indiana Bell
  Illinois Bell
  Michigan Bell
  Wisconsin Bell

Southwestern Bell
  Southwestern Bell     (LA, Arkansas, TX, OK, KA)

US West
  Northwestern Bell     (Minnesota, ND, SD, Iowa, Missouri?, Nebraska?)
  Mountain Bell         (Montana, ID?, WY, CO, UT, Arizona, NM, Nevada)
  Pacific Northwest Bell  (WA, OR, Alaska?, Hawaii?)

Pacific Telesis
  Pacific Bell          (CA)

And then there are the oddball at-most-partially-owned-by-AT&T non-Bell
companies that somehow managed to take over entire states:

Southern New England Telephone  (Connecticut)
Diamond State Telephone         (Delaware)

faigin@aerospace.aero.org (08/25/89)

>Pacific Telesis
>  Pacific Bell          (CA)

Pacific Bell most certainly does not provide service for all of California.
The two other *large* companies that provide service in California are
Continential Telephone (CONTEL) and Generally Terrible Equipment (oops)
Grouchy Turtle Enterprises (oops) General Telephone (GTE). I should know. I've
lived in CA all my life, and have never had service under PacBell. I have been
*blessed*? with GTE. (Which reminds me of a story of a PacBell customer who
moved to a GTE area, and then received a sympathy card from PacBell :-) )

It would be interesting to see a summary of where these companies provide
service. I know that GTE provides service in Hawaii and California, and that
Contel provides service in parts of CA, NV, and CO.

I have another question. Telephone books provide lots of information on what
it costs to call whereever. However, they do not provide information on what
regional company you would need to call to provide local service. The only way
I have found to do this is to see what prefixes are omitted from one book
(they belong to the "other" guy). This is critial in Los Angeles, where
service is divided between GTE and PacBell.

Daniel

--
Work :The Aerospace Corp M8/055 * POB 92957 * LA, CA 90009-2957 * 213/336-3149
Home :=> 9758 Natick Avenue * Sepulveda CA 91343 <= NEW ADDRESS * 818/892-8555
Email:faigin@aerospace.aero.org (or) Faigin@dockmaster.ncsc.mil
Voicemail: 213/336-5454 Box#3149 * "Take what you like, and leave the rest"

egs@u-word.dallas.tx.us (Eric Schnoebelen) (08/25/89)

In article <telecom-v09i0321m01@vector.dallas.tx.us> crew@Polya.Stanford.EDU
 (Roger Crew) writes:

- While we're at it, maybe we should settle all of these questions in one swell
- foop.  Here's my attempt:
-

	Some corrections to the list.. Not too bad of an original start
though..

- Bell South
-   Southern Bell		 (NC, SC, GA, FL)
-   South Central Bell     (KE, TN, Mississippi, AL)

	Add Louisiana to South Central Bell ( at least if my memories
of living in Shreveport are accurate.. )

- Southwestern Bell
-   Southwestern Bell     (LA, Arkansas, TX, OK, KA)

	Remove Louisiana, add Missouri..  ( SWBT is based in St. Louis,
Mo. )

- US West
-   Pacific Northwest Bell  (WA, OR, Alaska?, Hawaii?)
-   Northwestern Bell     (Minnesota, ND, SD, Iowa, Missouri?, Nebraska?)

	Remove Missouri ( see above )

-   Mountain Bell         (Montana, ID?, WY, CO, UT, Arizona, NM, Nevada)

	Nevada is served by Pacific Bell/Pacific Telesis.


	All of the above is from memory, checked by a CCMI/McGraw Hill
National Lata Map.


--
Eric Schnoebelen,			JBA Incorporated, Lewisville, Tx.
work: egs@u-word.dallas.tx.us			home: eric@egsner.cirr.com
		MS-DOS: The Cockroach of Operating Systems

john@apple.com (John Higdon) (08/28/89)

In article <telecom-v09i0326m05@vector.dallas.tx.us>, faigin@aerospace.aero.
org writes:
> (Which reminds me of a story of a PacBell customer who
> moved to a GTE area, and then received a sympathy card from PacBell :-) )

Which reminds me of a story that happened to myself. Here in the Silly
Con Vallee we are served exclusively by Pac*Bell except for the *town*
of Los Gatos, which has six prefixes of the Great Telephone Experiment.
(For those who are jumping to their keyboards to correct me, Morgan
Hill (GTE) and Gilroy (Contel) are not really in the metro area.)
Anyway, a radio station that I contract with does periodic remote
broadcasts from various businesses, usually on Saturdays.

For these broadcasts they like to have a phone line installed to
provide contact with the studio and to handle last-minute details that
may come up. (They haven't been bitten by the Cellular Bug yet.) This
is usually a piece of cake. You pick up the phone, dial 811-0997, tell
the person you want a temporary telephone line installed at [address]
on [Friday the whatever], disconnected on [Monday the whatever], billed
to the station, touch tone, no carrier, RJ11C jack. Done. The person at
the other end gives you the order #, the disconnect order #, the phone
number and that's that. Without fail, these lines have been there
waiting for every broadcast.

But then they wanted to broadcast from a car dealership in Los Gatos.
So I call this 800 number that sends me to someone in Thousand Oaks
(Thousand Jokes). I tell them that I want a phone line installed. "What
is the address of your business?" I give them the dealers address.
"Will this be addtional service?" No it will be new service. "What is
your social security number?" That's a little personal.

This sort of exchange went on for over thirty minutes. This person at
the other end had no concept of a "temporary" exchange telephone line.
I got stuff like "We'll have to bill you for a full month". Well, of
course. I had to pry the phone number and the order numbers out of him.
Throughout the transaction, I kept asking if there was a special
department that handled this type of transaction. No, there wasn't.

The day of the broadcast, Saturday, we arrived to find a jack labeled
with the station's call letters, but it was dead. We called repair and
they sent a burly phone man out who complained bitterly about being
called out on his day off. He went into the back room and fooned around
for about an hour, then came out and said there was nothing wrong with
the line. When I plugged a 2500D set into the jack and showed him it
was dead, he said that of course it was dead--that wire wasn't
connected in the phone room. Could he connect it? Well, he could, but
it would cost us $95 extra. What? $95 extra to have what I ordered
actually work? When I became visibly agitated, he pointed across the
street (where the CO was) and told me that building has the most
advanced switching equipment in the world (a GTD5, but he probably
didn't know that) and that he was sick of people putting down his great
company.

I told him it didn't matter what was in that building, if there was no
dial tone on the jack it was useless to me. He finally connected it in
the phone room, and later I found out that the station had a go-round
with GTE over an extra $95 charge.

Is it any wonder that there are people who literally red-line areas of
the state and refuse to consider living in any area served by GTE?
--
        John Higdon         |   P. O. Box 7648   |   +1 408 723 1395
      john@zygot.uucp       | San Jose, CA 95150 |       M o o !

pf@ti-csl.csc.ti.com (Paul Fuqua) (08/28/89)

  >  Date: Sunday, August 27, 1989  3:15pm (CDT)
  >  From: John Higdon <zygot!john at apple.com>
  >  Subject: Re: BOCs and Regionals
  >  Organization: Green Hills and Cows

  >  Is it any wonder that there are people who literally red-line areas of
  >  the state and refuse to consider living in any area served by GTE?

I feel the same way.  Many of the Dallas suburbs are "served" by GTE.  I can
always tell whether my sister is calling from her home in Grapevine (GTE) or
work in Arlington (SWB) -- I can barely hear her when she calls from home.

Funny thing is, GTE seems to work really hard at satisfying its business
customers.  They've won a number of accounts here, including the new system
for Texas Instruments, replacing a Centrex-based setup.  I suppose favoring
one group over the other is a business decision, but I think it's a pretty
stupid one.

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

deej@bellcore.bellcore.com (David Lewis) (08/29/89)

In article <telecom-v09i0321m01@vector.dallas.tx.us>, crew@Polya.Stanford.EDU
(Roger Crew) writes:
> While we're at it, maybe we should settle all of these questions in one swell
> foop.  Here's my attempt:

> NYNEX
>   New England Telephone  (Maine, NH, VT, Mass, RI)
>   New York Telephone

Note also that part of Conneticut is service by New England Tel.

> Bell Atlantic
>   New Jersey Bell
>   Bell of Pennsylvania
>   Chesapeake & Patomic   (Maryland, DC, VA?)

The Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Companies include Maryland,
District of Columbia, Virginia, and West Virginia.

Add Diamond State Telephone, covering Delaware.

> Bell South
>   Southern Bell		 (NC, SC, GA, FL)
>   South Central Bell     (KE, TN, Mississippi, AL)

As someone else said, add Louisana.

> Ameritech
>   Ohio Bell
>   Indiana Bell
>   Illinois Bell
>   Michigan Bell
>   Wisconsin Bell

> Southwestern Bell
>   Southwestern Bell     (LA, Arkansas, TX, OK, KA)

Actually, it's "Southwestern Bell Telephone Company"...  and as someone
else said, delete LA, add Missouri.

> US West
>   Northwestern Bell     (Minnesota, ND, SD, Iowa, Missouri?, Nebraska?)
>   Mountain Bell         (Montana, ID?, WY, CO, UT, Arizona, NM, Nevada)
>   Pacific Northwest Bell  (WA, OR, Alaska?, Hawaii?)

The three U S WEST "Information Distribution Companies" (IDCs, aka BOCs)
have since been reorganized into a single company, U S WEST
Communications.

As has been said... delete Missouri and Nevada from U S WEST.  According
to my LATA maps, neither Alaska nor Hawaii are covered by a BOC.
(Hawaii is GTE, at least for the most part; I don't know about Hawaii.)

> Pacific Telesis
>   Pacific Bell          (CA)

Add Nevada Bell, which covers those parts of Nevada not served by GTE
et.al.

> And then there are the oddball at-most-partially-owned-by-AT&T non-Bell
> companies that somehow managed to take over entire states:
>
> Southern New England Telephone  (Connecticut)
> Diamond State Telephone         (Delaware)

Actually, no; Diamond State Tel is part of Bell Atlantic, and New
England Tel serves at least a small part of CT.  In terms of part-sort-
of-Bell companies, tho, add Cincinnati Bell Inc.

There are also, as someone pointed out, numerous other telephone
companies serving parts of the US.  GTE is the largest as far as
revenues go, and I believe also the largest in terms of number of lines.
I don't have figures in front of me, but I seem to recall reading that
there are over 300 local exchange carriers operating in the US; and that
the BOCs serve on the order of 50% of the geographic area with on the
order of 80% of the lines.  If anyone else has more accurate numbers,
feel free to correct me.

--
David G Lewis				...!bellcore!nvuxr!deej

			"If this is paradise, I wish I had a lawnmower."

[Moderator's Note: Does anyone remember seeing that issue of Teleconnect
Magazine (Harry Newton and Company's nice publication) several years ago
at the time of divestiture when as an April Fool's joke they published
a bogus map of the 'Bell Operating Companies' and had the entity in the
southern part of Texas marked off as 'Taco Bell'?  :) :)    Ciao!   PT]

johnl@uunet.uu.net (John R. Levine) (08/30/89)

In article <telecom-v09i0333m11@vector.dallas.tx.us> nvuxr!deej@bellcore.
bellcore.com (David Lewis) writes:
>> NYNEX
>>   New England Telephone  (Maine, NH, VT, Mass, RI)
>>   New York Telephone
>
>Note also that part of Conneticut is service by New England Tel.

New York Tel provides service in Greenwich CT, which is next to the New York
state line.  New England Tel, as far as I can tell, serves the other four
New England states but not Connecticut.

On a somewhat related topic, is there any state that is entirely served by
BOCs with no area given to independents?  The only possibility I can think
of is Delaware.  Washington DC doesn't count, it's not a state.
--
John R. Levine, Segue Software, POB 349, Cambridge MA 02238, +1 617 492 3869
{ima|lotus}!esegue!johnl, johnl@ima.isc.com, Levine@YALE.something
Massachusetts has 64 licensed drivers who are over 100 years old.  -The Globe

jsol@bu-it.bu.edu (08/30/89)

New York Telephone serves Greenwich and Byram in CT. New England Tel doesn't
serve in CT.

--jsol

cmoore@brl.mil (VLD/VMB) (09/01/89)

There are FIVE other New England states besides Connecticut.

Delaware, Maryland, and DC come under BOCs except for 301-658 in Rising Sun,
Md. (Cecil County)

deej@bellcore.bellcore.com (David Lewis) (09/05/89)

In article <telecom-v09i0337m07@vector.dallas.tx.us>, esegue!johnl@uunet.uu.
net (John R. Levine) writes:
> In article <telecom-v09i0333m11@vector.dallas.tx.us> nvuxr!deej@bellcore.
> bellcore.com (David Lewis) writes:
> >Note also that part of Conneticut is service by New England Tel.
>
> New York Tel provides service in Greenwich CT, which is next to the New York
> state line.  New England Tel, as far as I can tell, serves the other four
> New England states but not Connecticut.

Oh, well, my diagram is wrong.  Shoulda trusted the LATA maps, not the
stupid PR stuff.

While we're picking nits, there are five other New England states...

> On a somewhat related topic, is there any state that is entirely served by
> BOCs with no area given to independents?  The only possibility I can think
> of is Delaware.  Washington DC doesn't count, it's not a state.

Give that man a half a cigar.  Delaware is entirely served by Diamond
State Tel.  Rhode Island (must be the other New England state he forgot
about ;-)) is entirely served by New England Tel.  Both of these
according to the LATA maps in Notes on the BOC Intra-LATA Networks,
which are three years old.

--
David G Lewis				...!bellcore!nvuxr!deej

			"If this is paradise, I wish I had a lawnmower."