From: aburt@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu (Andrew Burt)
Newsgroups: nyx.misc,du.general,co.general
Subject: Re: FYI - USWest wasting our money again
Date: 12 Sep 92 14:34:33 GMT
Distribution: co
Organization: University of Denver, Dept. of Math & Comp. Sci.

In <1992Sep11.230902.13800@mercury.cair.du.edu> jvilhube@diana.cair.du.edu (Jan Vilhuber) writes:

>In article <1992Sep11.215551.21484@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu> thester@nyx.cs.du.edu (Uncle Fester) writes:
>>I think what Eric means is this:  
>>He is 'SURE' that _IF_ US West had hired a consultant that knew _how_
>>people use computers, then they damn sure wouldn't have come up with the
>>hare (hair?) brained scheme that we are all talking about here.
>>I think his 'flame' (as you called it) was completely in line with the
>>debate.  He made a very valid point.  US West, whether it's the phone

>That's not what he said, or meant.

True; I took it in the sense of "this is so stupid it implies they must
have hired some consultant who doesn't have a clue", and while I wouldn't
have put it in such harsh terms, I agree with the sentiment, that *from*what*
I've*seen*so*far it looks really retarded.  I dearly hope someone can
convince me this is superior to any existing products, including superior
to services found on the internet, the internet itself, existing pay
services like Tragedy and Compu$erve, "standards" like X or ms-windows
for graphics, etc.  If you show me a better mousetrap I'll buy it.
(If you don't overcharge -- price/performance is still an issue.)

>>upon the "phone company" pinheads that are behind this deal.

>And it's not the phone company, OR pinheads behind this deal.

>>... "entity" of little companies...

Agreed in part -- but (a) since it is a subsidiary of what used to be
ONLY "the phone company" most people feel it is an outgrowth of "the
phone company", and indeed this is true; (b) they are covered by basically
the same body of regulations; (c) the money all goes into the same
shareholder and executive pockets as USWest Comm's profits do; (d) because
of (a) through (c) they can wield the name like a club, and people pay
attention.

Also (e) [where I now get on uncertain ground] they have direct
access to the phone number databases needed to implement a directory
service, whereas an outside company would have to (I presume) pay for
this information, and somehow pay to keep it updated.  I.e., I
naively imagine it like this: the "old phone company" had all this data
about phone numbers; during the breakup, the data was taken by Entity X
without "paying" anyone for it ("paying" in the sense of transferring
money outside the USWest shareholder domain; I'm sorry, but "transfer
pricing", like when you say "we have to pay the phone co. too" is moot
for this discussion since it has no bearing on the share price of the
stock -- USWest as a whole is not losing profit).  So, point (e) is that
entity X had this data nicely dropped in its lap, whereas some other
company (say Compu$erve) would have to pay dearly to obtain or construct it.

Witness, for example, the "competition" (Not!) in yellow page books.
While some companies have bravely started up new yellow pags, we all
(do we not?) laugh them off.  They're incomplete.  My point (e) applies
to this too: the uswest-direct yellow pages STARTED WITH the existing
full database of customers. A new yellow pages maker must either buy that
data or build their own, which is nearly impossible given that there's
already an existing YP that most services are already listed in.  I'm sure
I'll be corrected if I've misunderstood the YP situation.

Tricky subject (if I'm correct) since:  We can't throw out the existing
uswestYP and say "ok, start over from scratch" since we'd be without
YP for a few years.  But, by it's mere continued existence, it prevents
successful competition.

>I say to you what I said to Eric: get informed before spewing out
>a bunch of garbage on the net. You have no clue. After all, what have you
>read about either the product (Electronic Directory) OR US WEST?
>What do you know about the internal organization of US WEST?

Ah, too many embarrassing (to USW) stories for me to tell.  I've done
quite a bit of consulting with many different USW units, so I feel
pretty secure in saying "it's messed up". :-)

>What
>do you know of the limitations put on the Baby Bells by lunkheads
>in Congress and courts? Go read up, and come back. Now go play.

Or you could help by educating us, or at least point us to some on-line
info about this.

>(I apoligize for the harsh tone: I get pissed off when people
>start flaming about things and have not even gone through the motions
>to get knowledgeable about the subject)

Well, it all started with a newspaper and TV account of it.  This mere
and minor reporting started this avalanche -- so what folks SAW of it
was enough to get people strongly up in arms against it.  I know the
media isn't always the most accurate, but there must be some grains of
truth in what was said/shown, and we're all saying we don't like ANY of
what we saw.

If it's really awesome, then entity X has done a negligently bad job
of presenting it! :-)
-- 

Andrew Burt 		   					  aburt@du.edu

      "And that, my liege, is how we know the Earth to be banana-shaped"