djb@fsucs.cs.fsu.edu (David Brightbill) (09/05/89)
An interesting artifact of what I suppose to be deregulation . . .
I occasionally use the marine VHF to make phone calls from my boat. In the
last few months, things have changed in a big way. Before, I would contact the
marine operator at Apalachacola and s/he would place my call. I would get
billed for the call and a few bucks for marine access. Most of my calls are
placed to locations within 100 miles of Apalachacola. Today, I tried to place
a call to Crawfordville, about 20 miles from Apalachacola and in the same
area code but within the territory of a different BOC. This time, the
Apalachacola operator said she had to transfer me to the New Orleans marine
operator. I can't wait to get my bill. What's the guess....will I get billed
from NOLA-Crawfordville or Apalachacola-Crawfordville? The marine operator
in NOLA never said what LD carrier she was with but took my AT&T card number
with no problem. I also noticed that the quality of the connection to the
other party was a lot worse than usual. In fact, when the NOLA marine oper.
came on the line, the signal quality dropped quite noticeably.
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[Moderator's Note: Do you think this was a *temporary* re-routing, possibly
due to some trouble at the usual site (circuit or equipment malfunction,
etc) or a *permanent* change in procedure? The reason I ask is, IBT has
a Marine Operator at Lake Bluff, IL, and another one at Kenosha, WI, a small
community which sits right on the IL/WI border, along the lake. I tune it
on the scanner occassionally, and generally Lake Bluff handles the southern
end of Lake Michigan. But now and again, the operator will go on and make
a general announcement of the form, "okay, we're going to move to channel 3
for awhile," or she may say something about Kenosha is going to take her
calls for about ten minutes. If you stay tuned where you were, likely you'll
then note someone throwing carrier, getting a radio check or etc, and
presently Lake Bluff will sign back on the air, and start handling traffic
again. PT]