john@ucbvax.berkeley.edu (John Higdon) (04/04/89)
In California, Pacific Bell is doing a saturation campaign to sell
Centrex services to business. They push the reliablility of the service
("the equipment is in our office, and we monitor it 24 hours a day")
and the fact that it can grow with your company.
I think I have found a major flaw with centrex (other than the obvious
ones). In my home there are nine lines in Commstar II, Pac*Bell's
"small" centrex service for business and residence. The easiest way to
retrieve calls from my Watson is by calling it. Normally, I pick up any
phone, dial "#20" (the intercom code for the Watson) and get my
messages.
This morning in the Bay Area there was a small earthquake. I thought no
more about it until it was time to check my Watson. Picked up the phone
and, you guessed it, no dial tone. The CO was overloaded from all the
dummies calling Aunt Millie to see if she felt the 'quake.
So now here's the scenerio: There is an earthquake. Things fall off
shelves, shelves fall over, people are screaming. And XYZ Corporation
has now lost all of its internal communications because they made the
"right" choice and bought Centrex. At least if you own your own switch,
while you may not be able to make outgoing calls (CO trunks dead),
you can call up to the third floor to make sure everyone is OK.
--
John Higdon
john@zygot ..sun!{apple|cohesive|pacbell}!zygot!johne118-ak@euler.berkeley.edu (e118 student) (04/06/89)
>X-TELECOM-Digest: volume 9, issue 124, message 1 of 7 > >In California, Pacific Bell is doing a saturation campaign to sell >Centrex services to business.... >-- >John Higdon >john@zygot ..sun!{apple|cohesive|pacbell}!zygot!john Bizarre cross-posting, I admit.... I live in a student housing co-op. Recently, after some prodding by Pacific*Bell and much prodding by the president of our organization, our house had Centrex installed. While most of the disinformation seems to have come from our prez, there are still complaints I have with regard to Pacific Bell's end of things. (1) We were told that the $5 or so per month *included* FCC access charges; not so (not Pac Bell's fault, near as I can tell) (2) We are classed as "dorm Centrex," which is basically residential service. We pay the residential rate for FCC access. However, we do not even have the *option* of unlimited local calling. Why???? It really annoys me, just on principle, that I have to ponder the fact that my modem connection to this computer is costing me $0.004/minute. Not a cost of consequence by any means, but an annoyance anyway. (3) We can't get calling cards on our accounts, even though toll calls are billed to the individual rooms. I can see why giving us cards with our real phone numbers +4 would be messy for billing, but I don't see why they can't issue fictitious-number cards tied to the toll accounts. (4) Pac Bell seems to be terminally confused about the whole idea of dorm Centrex. I'm the house manager and therefore in charge of the system for the house. The house wound up making an overpayment to one of the room accounts. Pacific Bell refuses to refund the overpayment because "your name isn't shown as house manager." Bullshit. There is no other name that could POSSIBLY show as "house manager." Under the setup we have, I'm supposed to be authorized to handle this kind of stuff. But no-o-o-o-o. I can't penetrate the wall of unhelpfulness. I called the special number they have for house managers only to speak to someone allegedly knowledgeable about the system. No response. (5) They've been everything short of helpful in dealing with room changes at semester time. For once, a real and meaningful disclaimer: the opinions expressed above are my own and not necessarily reflective of my house, my co-op organization, or any other individual, not to mention the university. The purported facts related above I believe to be true. -- Linc Madison = e118-ak@euler.berkeley.edu