Received: by bu-cs.BU.EDU (5.58/4.7) id AA04734; Thu, 2 Feb 89 04:11:50 EST Message-Id: <8902020911.AA04734@bu-cs.BU.EDU> Date: Thu, 2 Feb 89 3:22:10 EST From: The Moderator Reply-To: TELECOM@bu-cs.BU.EDU Subject: TELECOM Digest V9 #42 To: TELECOM@bu-cs.bu.edu TELECOM Digest Thu, 2 Feb 89 3:22:10 EST Volume 9 : Issue 42 Today's Topics: Ripped off by the long distance carrier Hotel (and pay-phone) Horrors Re: Equal Access?? My foot!! Internat'l calling card woes A Modest Proposal Re: Don't blame Judge Greene A Response to Mr. Sirbu [Moderator's Note: This is part two of the Digest for 2-2-89. I've grouped together several messages from readers complaining of thier difficulty in making a straight-forward long distance call. I am also pleased to share a letter recieved from Marvin Sirbu criticizing my earlier comments on the MFJ. Mail continues to run heavy; I am about two days behind in postings. Bear with me. P. Townson] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 2 Feb 89 02:21:42 EST From: finn@eleazar.Dartmouth.EDU (Andy Behrens) To: telecom@bu-cs.bu.edu Subject: Ripped off by the long distance carrier On a recent trip to Connecticut, I made several phone calls from my hotel, charging them to a calling card. I didn't think to ask which long distance carrier would be used. (Yes, I should have known better). I got my phone bill today. One of the calls would have cost about $6 if I had placed it through an AT&T or Sprint operator -- and even less if I had dialed it directly. Telesphere/T.E.N. charged me $18.45. Do I have any recourse? What happens if I tell my local telephone company that I won't pay that portion of the bill? (They are billing me "as a service to Telesphere"). For that matter, does anyone know the address of the Connecticut Public Utilities Commission? -- Live justly, love gently, walk humbly. Andy Behrens andyb@coat.uucp internet: andyb%coat@dartmouth.edu uucp: {harvard,decvax}!dartvax!coat!andyb ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 1 Feb 89 12:34:53 EST From: Jerry Glomph Black To: telecom@bu-cs.bu.edu Subject: Hotel (and pay-phone) Horrors Yes, hotel thievery for LD calls is a time-honored tradition, e.g., >The problem that I have had is that even the lobby phone might be passed >through one of the dippy LD companies. The only clue that you might get >is that the 'thank you' message doesn't say the whole string of 'thank >you for using AT&T' - just the thank you part. > >The only technique I've found is to wait after the tone and force a human >operator to come on the line - at that point I can usually insist on getting >an AT&T operator. At least the call is only billed at operator assisted >rates and not the horrible surcharge some of the LD resellers will apply. > This is why it's not such a bad idea to get a credit card from one of the LD companies which is accessed through an 800-number. Most major hotel chains charge ->ZERO<- for 800- calls. Most (yes, I know, not all) COCOTS will let you get through free to 800- numbers. The most nasty COCOTS kill the tone generator after the call, so if you're not carrying a DTMF beeper (does anyone out there? They cost a few bucks.) you can wait for the Sprint (or whomever) operator to answer, so you pay normal op-assist rates. Much better than hotel or COCOT rates. There are a few 'can't-get-there-from-here' situations, like those nasty COCOTS at highway (GOTCHA!) rest areas, but in general, a little flexibility (and patience) pay off. ------------------------------ To: comp-dcom-telecom@uunet.UU.NET From: boottrax@csd4.milw.wisc.edu (Perry Victor Lea) Subject: Re: Equal Access?? My foot!! Date: 1 Feb 89 15:52:44 GMT In article anon@nowhere.uucp writes: > >Well, you may have guessed it. When the bill came, all the calls were >billed as International Telecharge Operator Assisted (!!) calls. The price? >About $1.25 a minute for a late evening call from Florida (Marco Island) >to Chicago. I can call Europe for less than that! > I was in the same situation when I tried using my ATT calling card from a phone up in Minneapolis. THe phone was assignbed to the MCI long distance service.. I never made the call and just quietly charged the guys house for the long distance call. ( He's my best friend, so he expects me to pull stunts like that). I couldn't understand why it was so hard to dial a 1800 and enter a calling card number from an MCI phone? ------------------------------ To: att!comp-dcom-telecom From: harvard!gatech!ihlpb.ATT.COM!kerns (Kerns) Subject: Internat'l calling card woes Date: 1 Feb 89 22:42:24 GMT I had another problem with International Calling Cards. While in Europe last month, I had no trouble using a public telephone in France and Germany - and getting connected to a US operator using my trusty AT&T calling card. In Switzerland, you can't use a public phone on the street, but must go to a PTT office where they can connect you. But Austria was a different story. On a public phone on the street I couldn't use my calling card, because the operator had to call me back - and there are no numbers on public phones. So I went to the PTT office and explained that I wanted to call a US number using my international calling card. They claimed there was absolutely no way they could do it. (They were willing to collect the call charge right there, or make a collect card.) So I called from my hotel, and was hit with a 300% surcharge when I checked out. $70 for my hotel bill, $90 for my phone call - about 15 minutes worth. Last time I call anyone from a hotel, especially in Europe. John Kerns AT&T Bell Labs ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 1 Feb 89 10:59:17 PST From: HECTOR MYERSTON Subject: A Modest Proposal To: Telecom@bu-cs.bu.edu It seems to me that: (1) Many people want to use AT&T Calling Cards from various places but cannot (2) AT&T is losing revenue because of (1) It does not take an MBA to figure out that it would be the advantage of both frustrated users and AT&T if a universal, non-blockable means of dialing an AT&T operator existed. How?, a Local Exchange Number ala FG A?, a 950- FG-D number?, 800 ?, 900?. ?????? The problem is not just that some AOS are crooks, it is also that AT&T is as imaginative in its services as the water company. ------- ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 31 Jan 89 12:13:51 -0500 (EST) From: Marvin Sirbu To: telecom-request@bu-cs.bu.edu Subject: Re: Don't blame Judge Greene PT- How could Harold have "opened the door to this kind of abuse" if it was authorized by the FCC prior to any act taken by Judge Greene? To assert that "everyone, including the FCC, took the lead from His Onery, Judge Greene" is to ignore the fact that it was in 1969--five years before the Antitrust suit heard by Judge Greene was even filed!-- that the FCC authorized competition in long distance, and 1980, more than a year before the decision to break up AT&T was made, that unlimited resale was authorized, opening up the market for alternative operator services companies. Remember also that the Modification of Final Judgement is a Consent Decree. That means, it is a decision which was agreed to by the parties (the Justice Department and AT&T) and presented to the court for its approval. Judge Greene never proposed divestiture, Assistant Attorney General Baxter, and AT&T President Charles Brown did. And they did so not under pressure from Judge Greene, but in order to derail legislation then pending in Congress which would have been even worse! (See for example Temin, Peter, "The Fall of the Bell System," (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1987). There are many things one can blame on Judge Greene (continuing restrictions on RBOC participation in information services, for example), but there are many parties in the story of telecommunications policy evolution: and the FCC, the Justice Department and the Congress have been messing around since long before Judge Greene got involved. You do a great service in moderating the telecom digest, but please, check your facts before flaming. Marvin Sirbu Professor of Engineering and Public Policy Carnegie Mellon University ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 2 Feb 89 03:19:41 EST From: telecom@bu-cs.BU.EDU (TELECOM Moderator) To: telecom@bu-cs.bu.edu Subject: A Response to Mr. Sirbu Dear Mr. Sirbu, Your participation in our little Digest is deeply appreciated. Persons with your background in telecom are always valued resources in discussion groups such as comp.dcom.telecom/[Telecom Digest]. But I think you misunderstood me. I have NEVER spoken against competition in long distance services. Some of them are woefully inadequate for my needs; many of them promise 'savings over AT&T' which never actually materialize. But so be it. Nor have I ever objected to the *right* of AOS companies to operate, as worthless as they are, and as deceptive as they are in their operations. Yes of course the FCC approved alternative LD services in 1969. I remember well that MCI's first application to Illinois Bell was fraudulent on its face; claiming they wanted merely to have 'limited service between Chicago and St. Louis for a few selected customers'. But I digress: all are free to compete, but why did Judge Greene feel that AT&T had to be broken up in the process? A built in bias against AT&T was prevalent throughout the procedings. You rightly noted the end result was a Consent Decree. Are you forgetting that if I held a gun to your head you would 'consent' to anything I requested? It has been claimed that AT&T signed off on the decree because they wanted to go into the computer business. A casual glance at that side of the business today would show that it has been a miserable failure for the company. Either some very poor business judgment was used to 'decide to enter the computer business' or else there was more to it than my former neighbor Charlie Brown wanted to discuss. You reference Peter Temin's account, and while it is comprehensive, Mr. Temin was not without his own axes to grind. I should talk, huh! Perhaps you saw my essay on the subject which appeared in [Telephony Magazine] and [EMMS Newsletter] at the time. As to the exact chronology of events, I don't think it is all that important which came first and which came later. A word from Harold Greene at any phase of the proceedings carried a lot of weight. And the word from Harold was you can dump on AT&T with impunity in his courtroom. Even the largest corporation in the world deserves to be treated ethically and fairly. Again, my thanks for your participation here. Patrick Townson TELECOM Digest Moderator ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest *********************