From: vixen!jadams@uunet.UU.NET (26070-adams)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Deterioration of POTS
Date: 17 Aug 92 12:53:07 GMT
Organization: Bellcore, Livingston, NJ
X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu
X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu
X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 12, Issue 642, Message 1 of 10

In article <telecom12.636.1@eecs.nwu.edu>, lauren@vortex.COM (Lauren
Weinstein) writes:

> John Higdon asks how I think POTS has deteriorated.  Perhaps not from
> the standpoint of "techies" (the category into which many of us
> reading TELECOM Digest could be classified).  But for the average
> telephone subscriber, phone service is becoming increasingly confused
> and expensive.

(Extremely salient material deleted for bandwidth considerations.)

(And our Esteemed Moderator underscores Lauren's points well ...) 

> [Moderator's Note: Let's face it, Lauren: Between Judge Harold Greene
> who disgraced his robe and courtroom to wreck the public telephone
> network in the USA; 

IMHO, Judge Greene was not alone in this caper.  We, yes you and I,
let him and a bunch of ambulence chasers in the Justice Department
fiddle in an area where none of them was familiar, let alone
competent.  Where were our laments when this whole affair started?
(I'm attempting to calm down now.)

I am convinced more than ever in a letter I wrote to my then
Congresswoman Millicent Fenwick in April,1 982 concerning then HR5158
correcly summarizes the role of numerous bureaucrats, lawyers, low
rent lobbyists, etc.: ... direct quote from letter ... "I offer the
following irony: There are two large forces at work shaping the future
of communications policy in the United States.  The larger of the two
has brought about: Vietnam, Watergate, Abscam, an 18-cent postcard,
double digit inflation, a $90 billion budget defict, shortages
(contrived or otherwise), and many others.  The other was responsible
for: Information theory, the transistor, the first communications
satellite, the finest communication system in the world, the first
electrical digital computer, magnetic bubble technology, gainfully
employing 1+ million people, earning a fair rate of return for three
million stockholders, and many others.  Can you guess which one is
trying to tell the other how to run the telephone business?

 ... (other, slightly libelous attacks on politicians deleted) ...

In national telecommunications policy, as in virtually every other
issue facing the United States, it is lucid that the government can
not deal with the problem, since it is the problem."


Jack (John) Adams	    Bellcore RRC 4B-259
(908) 699-3447 {Voice}	    (908) 336-2871 {Facsimile}
jadams@vixen.bellcore.com   kahuna@attmail.com


[Moderator's Note: Judge Greene's dislike and prejudice against AT&T
was never disguised. A year or so before the proceedings began he made
it very plain to a couple cronies in the Justice Department that his
courtroom would be a friendly place for anyone who wanted to work over
AT&T.  And his defenders always say, "But the judge didn't do
anything!  AT&T agreed to divestiture and signed off on it!" Of course
they did; how long can any large corporation fight the federal
government until its resources are totally depleted? AT&T wisely quit
before they were totally ruined. I am reminded of a couple years ago
when the City of Chicago aldermen decided they would take over
Commonwealth Edison here.  The very idea that the people who run the
public schools, the public housing and the public transportation here
would start running the nuclear reactors as well scared the bejeezus
out of everyone but the aldermen. Only when several large companies
flatly said they would move out of town and the aldermen realized how
much they would miss the *big* franchise fees Edison paid did they
recant.  The same thing should have happened in the AT&T case: several
major corporations ganging up on Justice at the same time, using all
the pressure they had available would have turned the tide.  PAT]