Date: Tue, 29 Sep 92 04:18 PDT
From: john@zygot.ati.com (John Higdon)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Cable Companies and Dial Tone
Reply-To: John Higdon <john@zygot.ati.com>
Organization: Green Hills and Cows
X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu
X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu
X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 12, Issue 748, Message 2 of 12

Here is a good case in point to illustrate why I do not feel that
cable companies will be much of a threat to traditional LECs, at least
for awhile.

This morning as I was pleasantly listening to my DMX (cable radio) and
finishing up some software features for a client, the music died with
a bang. All thirty channels of the box were dead. All seventy-plus TV
channels were dead as well. The time: 3:30 AM. So I called TCI Cable
repair. I was informed that there was "maintenance" being performed in
my area and that the cable would be out for several hours.

Again, a word to all of you pretenders to the throne for local dial
tone service: this does not wash for telephone users. The cable lady
tried to placate me by saying that it was assumed that very few people
would be watching TV at this time of night. But when was the last time
your telephone went dead for several hours for "maintenance", even in
the middle of the night? Not even GTE does this!

Cable service may be expendable, but telephone service is not. If
cable companies think for one minute that any telephone service they
provide can even approach the unreliability of their entertainment
product, then the traditional LECs have nothing whatsoever to fear.
People live and work around the clock. No utility (and cable companies
are not utilities--yet) can presume to interrupt service, even during
the wee hours, to perform maintenance.

Side note: Our so-called electric utility in northern California,
Pacific Gas & Electric, does indeed turn electricity off IN THE MIDDLE
OF THE DAY to do maintenance. My electric service on Mt. Loma Prieta
has been turned off for hours in the middle of the day dozens of times
for routine maintenance. So here you have a monopoly, supposedly
regulated by the PUC, that provides worse than third world service.
My home telephone system and computers are all on a UPS, otherwise I
would be disconnected frequently. To call PG&E the GTE of electric
utilities would be an insult to GTE.

My point is this: either there are no minimum service standards for
electric utilities or (as I suspect) regulatory bodies are limited in
the influence they can exert to force a utility to provide acceptable
service. If cable companies or anyone else enter the dial tone
business, you had better be very careful. Nothing and no one can
guarantee minimum service levels.

The "Cable Bill" passed, but I hope no one really expects much to
change.


John Higdon  |   P. O. Box 7648   |   +1 408 264 4115     |       FAX:
john@ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | 10288 0 700 FOR-A-MOO | +1 408 264 4407


[Moderator's Note: I am reminded of MCI's service shutdowns in the wee
hours of the morning back in the late seventies and early eighties.
Those were the days when you had to dial some seven digit (not 950)
number, get their dial tone and place your call. As often as not,
about 1:00 AM, calls to their switch would ring open for an hour or
more. No explanation, no nothing. Asking MCI got me nowhere; I finally
sent an informal complaint to the FCC which required MCI to respond to
them with a copy to me: "Well", said MCI, "we have to shut down to do
our billing and routine maintainence work each day ... ". My followup
query to MCI/FCC was I wonder what time of day AT&T shuts down their
network to do billing and maintainence?  No answer, of course.   PAT]