ms6b#@ANDREW.CMU.EDU (Marvin Sirbu) (04/22/87)
Since BellCore is owned by the seven Regional Holding Companies, it has a lot of clout in setting standards -- as long as its parent companies all agree. But Bellcore is not all-powerful. Since the RHC's aren't permitted to manufacture, Bellcore must still persuade companies like AT&T or Northern Telecom to make things the way they want -- and at a price the RHC's can afford. Moreover, Bellcore doesn't represent GTE --which is as big as any of the regionals--nor the 1400 other independent excahange carrriers. Nor does it represent the interexchange carriers such as ATT or MCI. Formal U.S. standards are actually set in the ANSI T1 committee, which is sponsored by the Exchange Carriers Standards Association -- a group set up specifically to foster standards development after the divestiture. Any corporation that wishes to can join T1; Bellcore and the RHC's represent only a fraction of the total membership. The working committees of T1 try to achieve consensus standards, and most of the time they do, but a 2/3 vote is all that is formally required for approval under ANSI rules. The T1 committee finds itself spending lots of time drafting contributions to international standards setting groups operated by the CCITT (Comite Consultatif International de Telephone et Telegraph). Few manufactures want to have standards which are U.S. only, since that means they must build different products for the international market. Thus, the standards adopted by ANSI for the U.S. are strongly influenced by what is happening in the CCITT. Marvin Sirbu CMU