johnl@think.UUCP (John R. Levine) (12/09/87)
One of the effects of the Bell System breakup is that 800 service is supposed to be equally available from all long distance carriers, as are other kinds of long distance service. At the time of the breakup, the sophisticated equipment that handles 800 calls went to AT&T rather than to the operating companies, so for quite a while you could get 800 service only from AT&T, because the operating companies didn't have the equipment to route individual 800 numbers to different carriers. The other carriers, particularly MCI, complained loudly enough that the government mandated an interim unequal access 800 service until the operating companies install updated switching equipment. The unequal access works by the simple hack of routing specific 800 prefixes to fixed carriers. MCI gets 800-444, 800-666, 800-950, and several others. Sprint gets 800-877 and a few others. AT&T still gets all of the rest. So far so good. Last month I was in a small town in West Virginia which was serviced by the local Bell company, C&P Telephone, and I dialed Sprint's access number for travel card calls, 800-877-8000. To my surprise, I got a recording from MCI telling me that they couldn't complete my call. Evidently when the local operating company reprogrammed their tandem exchanges they either made a mistake keying in the codes, or else were under the common misconception that MCI is a generic term for all non-AT&T carriers. Either way, MCI is getting calls intended for Sprint. In this case the misrouting is is relatively innocuous, but I wonder what other misroutings, strange loops, and other surprises lay in wait. The topology of the phone network has become considerably more complicated since the breakup, and although it is all coordinated by Bellcore, it's no longer under a single organization's control. It's not even clear to whom I complain to have this fixed. Will phone routing ever work correctly again? John Levine, johnl@ima.isc.com or ima!johnl or Levine@YALE.something