Telecom/1996-04-telecom-walnutcreek.iso/technical/foreign.exchange.service

Text File | 1993-09-16 | 27KB | 498 lines

TELECOM Digest     Wed, 18 Aug 93 23:09:30 CDT    Volume 13 : Issue 590

Inside This Issue:                        Moderator: Patrick A. Townson

    Re: Foreign Exchange Service (Jack Decker)
    Re: Foreign Exchange Service (William J. Earl)
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From: [e-mail] (Jack Decker)
Subject: Re: Foreign Exchange Service
Date: 18 Aug 1993 18:32:20 GMT
Organization: Youngstown State/Youngstown Free-Net


Warning: This message is LONG.  I apologize in advance, but hope it
contains enough useful suggestions to make up for the length.

On Tue Aug 17 21:02:06 1993, [e-mail] (Jody Kravitz) wrote:

> I've been trying to find ways of reducing the phone costs for my
> wife's business and have been getting the runaround from Pacific Bell.

> My wife is a veterinarian and runs a mobile clinic from a specially
> converted motor home.  Most of her clients are from an a nearby
> mountain community.  That community has a #5ESS which is slaved off
> the #5ESS switch in our home town.

> Despite the proximity of the mountain town, incoming and outgoing
> calls are expensive.  The cost of a daytime call to (or from) the town
> is $0.10 * (minutes+1).  We had about $80.00 in calls to there last
> month and the volume is increasing.  Oddly, calls to (or from) another
> (smaller) town in the same general direction, but further away, are
> free.

First, a general comment ... you have run into a problem that cries
out for resolution in many areas of the country.  Without going into a
long diatribe, local calling areas in many part of the country are
laid out in somewhat arbitrary and discriminatory patterns ...
patterns that may have made perfect sense 40 or 50 years ago, but no
longer do.  I could write paragraphs about this but for now I will
just say that one common example is that folks living in major
metropolitan areas can often call anywhere within a 25-50 mile radius
(it varies by area), while folks living in rural areas of the same
state may be lucky if they can call into the nearest town without
incurring a toll charge.  My opinion has always been that it would be
much fairer to give everyone local calls within a certain radius (say
20-30 miles, like the folks in the big cities get [Chicago excepted,
of course]), no matter where they live within a state.  One of the
strengths that competitive local dialtone providers will have is that
they won't have to follow the exchange boundaries of existing telcos.
But, I digress ...

> Since she has no "office", we terminated her business phone line in
> our residence.  That has worked well, but in order to appear more
> "permanent" to her customers in the neighboring town, we recently
> installed a "vanity" number (xxx-0500) in that town with remote call
> forwarding to our regular business number.  This saves the caller the
> cost of calling our "old" business number, but in addition to the cost
> of the service, each forwarded call costs us $0.10 * (minutes+1).

Yup.  Now let me first ask this.  Have you checked the local calling
areas to see if there is another exchange that is a "free" call from
both the exchange in which the RCF number is installed, and your
residence?  If so, you could set up the Remote Call Forwarding in THAT
exchange, your customers in the neighboring town could still call you
for free, and you'd lose the per-minute charge.  I'm assuming you've
checked out this possibility already, but on the other hand, I'm
amazed at how many people don't ... they just don't think about going
through a third exchange (the shortest distance between two points may
be a straight line, but in telephony that's NOT necessarily the least
expensive route!).

> I recently discovered that one of my neighbors has "foreign exchange
> service" in their residence.  This seemed like it might be a good
> idea, so I placed several calls to Pacific Bell's residence and
> business service offices.  My first conversation was with a residence
> service rep who seemed informed and helpful.  My second call was to a
> business rep who seemed to want to keep me uninformed.  She left me so
> angry I felt I was talking to Ernestine the operator in a Lily Tomlim
> skit.

I hate to sound like a broken record, but people should never, ever
deal with "business office" personnel if you have a need that's the
least bit unusual.  The minute you realize that the person you're
talking to either doesn't have a clue, or is being evasive, you need
to ask to talk to a supervisor (and the supervisor's supervisor if
necessary).  The goal of the lowest level folks is often to answer
your question (note I did NOT say "CORRECTLY answer your question) and
get you off the line as quickly as possible.

If you're REALLY getting the runaround, you might try saying to the
supervisor that if you can't get a straight answer from the telco,
you'll try forwarding your question via the Public Utilities
Commission and see if THEY can get a straight answer, and request the
supervisor's name so that you can put it in your letter in order to
show that you did try to get the information through regular channels
first.  If you say something like that, the supervisor will generally
kick you up to someone who can help you post haste ... but if not, a
written request sent via the PUC will often get you ACCURATE
information like nothing else will!

Now, the sad fact is that in many areas untimed Foreign Exchange (FX)
service is available only on a "grandfathered" basis ... that is, it's
available only to existing customers, and then only as long as they
remain at their current location.  If they move, they lose it, or have
to get the newer FX offering that charges a per-minute rate on both
incoming and outgoing calls.

There ARE ways around this, but you have to be pretty telecom-savvy
and do a lot of digging.  The first thing I'd check for is any
intra-LATA toll calling plans that the telephone company doesn't want
you to know about.  The PUC may be able to help you find these, if
they exist.  For example, in Michigan, there is the Adjacent Exchange
Toll Calling Plan (AETCP) that (for residential users only) provides
UNLIMITED calling to all adjacent toll exchanges (those in your LATA
only) for $15.00 per month.  Since Michigan allows the unlimited
option for residential lines only, it wouldn't help you much, but then
you aren't in Michigan anyway.  :-) My point, though, is that it's
like pulling teeth to get many Michigan telcos to even tell you that
the AETCP exists, and even if they do, they'll try to sell you on
"Circle Calling" or some other MEASURED option instead.  So you want
to look for intra-LATA optional calling plans that are tariffed, but
not widely advertised or promoted by the telcos.

Failing that, let's go back to that FX line.  Think about what it
really is.  It has (at least) two components: Provision of local dial
tone (essentially a regular POTS line that could be terminated in the
same exchange, if you had an office there, but isn't) and the line
that extends your POTS line to another exchange (including any
repeaters, amplifiers, etc.).  If you let telco handle both components
of this in a "bundled" offering (which is essentially what FX is),
then they can hook up their meter (so to speak) and charge on a
per-call basis.  But now suppose that you order each component
separately and YOU tie them together (preferably without telling
telco, although as long as you're ordering tariffed services and not
using them illegally, they really can't say much even if they find
out).

To give you an example: Suppose your wife works out a deal with one of
her customers in the neighboring town ... preferably one that owns
contiguous property that crosses the exchange boundary, if such
exists.  She gives the guy free annual immunizations for his horses or
something like that, and he allows her to put some phone equipment in
his basement (or even a dry part of his barn), and maybe erect a SMALL
structure (a storage shed would probably do) on the other side of the
property.  If the property straddles an exchange boundary, you order a
POTS line on each side of the boundary, (one terminating at the house
and the other in the storage shed which would of course be on the
other side of the boundary), and then you run a hunk of underground
cable between the two, and use a WATS-extender type device (or even a
simple two-line call forwarding device, if all you care about is
incoming calls) to forward calls from one line to the other.

If you can't get access to property straddling the exchange boundary
(or if tariffs absolutely forbid having service from two different
telcos on the same property, even if the property does straddle the
boundary and even if the service would be in separate buildings), then
your goal would be to get an UNmeasured line between your remote
location (where your POTS line terminates in the adjacent town) and
your office.  There are several offerings that might be available:

1) A "dry" metallic pair, sometimes referred to as an "intercom" or
"audio" circuit.  You do NOT need a "conditioned" pair such as used
for broadcast applications, but depending on the tariffs, that may be
the only type of metallic circuit available.  This would work only if
the combined distance of your "dry" pair PLUS the loop serving your
POTS line isn't too long to allow reliable operation (if is is, as I
think it might be in your particular case, you might still be able to
do it if you insert a "long loop extender" device into the loop).  In
this case, you'd simply cross-connect your POTS line to your metallic
pair, stick a phone at the office, and keep your mouth shut about what
you did!

2) An "Off-Premises Extension" (OPX) line.  Strangely enough, in some
areas you can get what is essentially an unmeasured FX line IF you
also have a "real" phone in the serving exchange.  In this case, the
"real" phone is considered the primary line, and the line coming into
your office would be considered an "Off-Premises Extension" of the
first line.  So, assuming you had a POTS line put into your customer's
home in the neighboring exchange as suggested above, you would tell
telco that you have opened an "office" in your customer's basement,
and need an "Off-Premises Extension" of the phone line there that
terminates in your real office (your home in this case).  This is
actually similar to what you'd be doing in number 1) above, except
that telco would be more responsible for maintaining the quality of
the line (also, the mileage charges MAY be different because in one
case they'd be calculated from your customer's home to your office,
while in the other case they'd probably be calculated from the
telephone exchange building to your office).

3). A PBX Off-Premises Extension.  Some telcos have gotten wise to the
fact that a regular OPX line can be used as an FX line, so they have
filed tariffs that say that even if there IS a phone in the serving
exchange, if the OPX is in a distant exchange the ALL calls on the
line (no matter which extension they originate from/are answered by)
must be billed on a per-minute basis, similar to FX lines.  This is a
hard sell to the PUC's (since the phone located in the serving
exchange might indeed be the primary business location), so tariffs
differ from state to state.  But there is another type of Off-Premises
Extension, and that is an extension hanging off of a PBX.  In this
case telco gives you what is essentially the equivalent of a bare pair
of wires and you are expected to connect one end to a PBX (which
supplies dialtone) and the other end to a telephone instrument.  Of
course, if the PBX allows you to dial "9" and access an outside trunk
at the remote location, and if the PBX just happens to be set to
"night answer" and all incoming calls ring directly through to your
extension ... well, you can see the problem telco would have determining
if there were really a PBX hanging out there.

Some folks do this and actually put a small PBX (one of the small
Panasonic units or some such) out there ... there is no law that says
you have to have more than one POTS business line coming into your
PBX!  But I've also heard of folks putting something like a dialer
unit there (programming it to "eat" a leading "9" digit, so if a telco
tech ever checks the line, sure enough, he'll have to dial a "9" to
get an outside line) or just connecting the end that's supposed to be
connected to the PBX right to a POTS line. The latter is probably a
violation of telco tariffs, though.  But a small PBX is cheap,
particularly if you buy it on the used market (do you get Telecom Gear
magazine?  There are probably dozens of suppliers of used PBX's in
there).

> I have several unanswered questions:

> Neither rep could explain to me how "engineering" computed the mileage
> numbers for the "foreign exchange service" rates I was quoted.  One of
> the numbers was called "suburban mileage" and the other was something
> like "distance between rate centers".  The COs are 15+ air miles
> apart, and my home is 19 air miles from the foreign CO.  I was quoted
> three "quarter-mile units of suburban mileage and 37 "quarter-mile
> units between rate centers".

Unfortunately, the mileage charges are something you cannot get around
*UNLESS* you can somehow provide the link that straddles the exchange
boundary yourself (which is why I suggested trying to find a property,
possibly a large farm, that straddles the exchange boundary).  Your
state PUC should be able to give you both information on how the
distance is computed, and the exact exchange boundaries for the
exchanges in question (which would aid you in finding that large farm
I spoke of).  Actually, if you had given the exchange names, someone
here that gets this data might have been able to give you the
"official" mileage between CO's.

> Can anyone define the true meanings of these terms for me ?

The "surburban mileage" is the distance between your central office
and your home (and if you use the scheme I mentioned above and can't
supply the link crossing the exchange boundary yourself, there may
also be "surburban mileage" at the other end ... this would probably be
true in cases 1) or 3), but hopefully would not be the case if you
went with number 2), because the OPX line could be cross-connected at
the distant central office.  The "distance between rate centers" is
just a fancy way of saying "the TARIFFED distance between the serving
central offices." That may or may not coincide with the actual
physical location of the telephone exchange building (originally it
would have when the exchange first came into existance, but if the
exchange has been physically relocated since, the "rate center" would
likely stay at the original location).

When you say that you were quoted "three quarter-mile units of
suburban mileage", that probably means that your office is about 3/4
of a mile airline distance from your central office.  If they quoted
you "37 quarter-mile units between rate centers", that means they are
figuring 9.25 airline miles between the original centers of the
exchanges.  Since the mileages you gave are quite different than that,
I suspect that either you're a bit off on the true airline distances
involved, or one or both of the exchanges has been moved, or the
person giving you this information flat out gave you wrong information.

That being the case, I would ask (again via the PUC if necessary in
order to get a response) for a WRITTEN quotation on company letterhead
for any service you plan to order, so that you avoid any nasty
surprise after the circuits are installed (the old "I don't know who
gave you THAT figure for the mileage, but it certainly isn't correct"
trick!)

> The business service rep said the location of the rate centers was
> "proprietary".  Can this be true ?

They may be "proprietary" in the sense that the information is "owned"
by the company for copyright purposes (and even that interpretation
may be a bit of a stretch), but it's certainly not top-secret informa-
tion.  The PUC should be able to give you this information.  If you
had given the exchange names, readers with access to the V&H tapes
could probably have given you this info as well.

> The residence rep said that unmeasured (untimed) FX service was no
> longer available.  The per-call charges are the same as local measured
> service.  The #5ESS switches and the time-sensitivity leads me to
> wonder about the implementation.

Keep in mind that if you have mandatory measured service, there is no
way around that.  But in many areas, the telco charges on a per minute
basis for both INCOMING and OUTGOING usage on an FX line, even though
unlimited flat-rate service is still available to non-FX customers.
The bottom line is that they don't like to lose toll revenue, so they
have repriced FX in such a way to make it financially unattractive.
So what you have to do is order something that is functionally
equivalent to FX (or that will at least meet your needs), but that
costs less, if at all possible.

> Do they actually allocate a circuit (or subchannel on a T1)
> permanently, or do they allocate on the fly? Gee, could I get a fast
> busy from the local CO instead of remote dial-tone on a bad day?

It depends on the type of service you have, the serving telco, etc.
so I'll leave that question to those more knowledgeable about the
inner working of the telco.  The thing to keep in mind is that there
will always be circuits available for untimed use (broadcasters,
background music providers, alarm system companies and others that
need a 24 hour per day connection use them) but the questions are "Can
you afford one?" and "What equipment will you need to provide to give
you the functional equivalent of an FX line?"

> I assume that the real cost of providing service to residences and
> businesses are the same.  I further believe that business usage IS
> rate sensitive.

Actually, the vast majority of telco costs (particularly on calls
within a local calling area) bear no relation at all to usage.  The
only time usage increases costs is when a telco has to add equipment
to handle an increased volume of calls, and that is really a rare
occurance on modern digital switches.  This is even more true as fiber
cable replaces copper, since you don't have to replace the cable to
expand circuit capacity.  Paradoxically, as usage-induced costs become
a lesser percentage of telco costs, telcos have pushed harder and
harder for usage-sensitive billing.

The one kernal of truth in your statement is that businesses do tend
to make calls during the heaviest usage periods, while residential
customers (taken as a whole) tend to make more of their calls in the
evening hours.  Thus, if telco DOES have to add equipment to handle
increased usage, it's most likely going to be driven to do so by the
needs of business customers.

> Is this assumption way off?

> If not, why are residences given more incentives (through lower rates,
> additional "plans", etc) to make more calls, yet businesses are not?

Telco does whatever it can to maximize profits.  The typical business
knows that it HAS to make toll calls from time to time; it doesn't
have the luxury of saying "We're not going to make any toll calls."
But residential customers can and do avoid making toll calls because
of the cost.  What telco tries to do, then is come up with packages
that will cause customers to actually spend MORE on toll than they
normally would.  For example, if an "average" customer normally makes
only $3.00 of intraLATA toll calls a month, the telco might come up
with a $5.00/month plan that would give the customer much more calling
time.  If they can get that extra $2.00/month, it really doesn't
matter that much how many extra minute of usage it costs them, since
the circuits are already there and generally aren't nearly fully
loaded during the times that the calling plans are in effect.

> The residence rep suggested that the coming Intra-Lata competition
> would precipitate a variety of new, more competitive rates and
> "packages".  He also said that some "very short haul" Intra-Lata calls
> would be "protected" from competition.  He was pretty sure that calls
> from our home town to the neighboring mountain town would be
> "protected".

> Why would/should any toll calls be protected from competition?

It shouldn't, and if it were any other state I suggest that the rep
(or whoever told him that) was doing some wishful thinking.  But you
are in California, and from what I've heard, the PUC out there doesn't
always operate in the same way as any other PUC might (I'm trying to
choose my words carefully so as to be chartible).  In Michigan, all
toll calls are open to competition, and Michigan Bell has offered some
really attractive intra-LATA calling plans.  Unfortunately, these
aren't available to GTE customers, and for some reason Michigan Bell
and GTE do not compete for intraLATA toll traffic in each others'
territories, even though I believe they legally could.

In my opinion, you're not going to see a lot of these phoney (pardon
the pun) charges disappear until there is full competition for local
phone service.  I believe it is coming, and as far as I'm concerned,
it can't come fast enough.

Oh, one other thing.  In your particular situation, I spoke of
providing your own circuit across the exchange boundary, and using a
couple of POTS lines and a WATS extender/call diverter/similar device.
While I was thinking in terms of a physical cable (provided by you)
crossing the boundary, keep in mind that if you are knowledgeable
enough, you might be able to achieve something similar using a short
range infrared link, or even short-haul microwave.  Since you indicate
that the community you're trying to link up with is on an adjacent
mountain, it opens the possibility of using some line-of-sight form of
communication.  Without knowing the particulars of the nearby terrain,
I can't say much more than that.  The initial cost of microwave tends
to be expensive; infrared is less so but has a much shorter range and
is more susceptible to interruption by heavy rain, etc.

I would encourage you to be creative, explore various options, and let
us all know if you find something that works.  I'd also encourage you
to summarize any other helpful responses you may receive (I *hope*
this one is helpful!).  :-) I think this is a problem that is shared
by many, many telephone users that live in places where the local
calling areas appear to have been designed by Scrooge himself!


Jack

------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (William J. Earl)
Subject: Re: Foreign Exchange Service
Reply-To: [e-mail] (William J. Earl)
Organization: Silicon Graphics Inc.
Date: Thu, 19 Aug 1993 00:13:34 GMT


In article <[e-mail]>, kravitz@foxtail (Jody
Kravitz) writes:

> Neither rep could explain to me how "engineering" computed the mileage
> numbers for the "foreign exchange service" rates I was quoted.  One of
> the numbers was called "suburban mileage" and the other was something
> like "distance between rate centers".  The COs are 15+ air miles
> apart, and my home is 19 air miles from the foreign CO.  I was quoted
> three "quarter-mile units of suburban mileage and 37 "quarter-mile
> units between rate centers".

> Can anyone define the true meanings of these terms for me ?

> The business service rep said the location of the rate centers was
> "proprietary".  Can this be true ?

> The residence rep said that unmeasured (untimed) FX service was no
> longer available.  The per-call charges are the same as local measured
> service.  The #5ESS switches and the time-sensitivity leads me to
> wonder about the implementation.

      I have unmeasured Residence Foreign Exchange Service, and have
had it for at least seven or eight years.  I am charged for 14 foreign
exchange quarter miles and four quarter miles of suburban mileage.
The former is the air mileage (3.5 miles) from my house (in the
Boulder Creek exchange) to the exchange boundary for the foreign
exchange (Los Altos).  (I lucked out in that regard; most people would
be further away.)  I pay the same suburban mileage on my local phone;
it simply represents how far beyond the basic service radius my house
is from the local CO.  (I am about seven air miles and eight wire
miles from the CO.)

> Do they actually allocate a circuit (or subchannel on a T1)
> permanently, or do they allocate on the fly? Gee, could I get a fast
> busy from the local CO instead of remote dial-tone on a bad day?

     My foreign exchange circuit is essentially a leased voice-grade
line from my house to the Los Altos CO (via Boulder Creek, Santa Cruz,
and Los Gatos).  Sometimes a component goes out at one of the
intermediate exchanges, and a repairman has to be dispatched to fix
it, so I hear about the locations of various failures.

> I assume that the real cost of providing service to residences and
> businesses are the same.  I further believe that business usage IS
> rate sensitive.

     When I last inquired some years ago, business foreign exchange
was always measured, just a regular business service was always
measured.  Now, of course, the local calling area usage rates are
quite low (sometimes as low as $0.01 per minute), so the usage charge
is not as high as it once was.

> If not, why are residences given more incentives (through lower rates,
> additional "plans", etc) to make more calls, yet businesses are not?

     The costs are of course identical, except for the possibility
that a business line may be in use a greater fraction of the time,
thereby tying up a larger fraction of the central office switch's
capacity.

> The residence rep suggested that the coming Intra-Lata competition
> would precipitate a variety of new, more competitive rates and
> "packages".  He also said that some "very short haul" Intra-Lata calls
> would be "protected" from competition.  He was pretty sure that calls
> from our home town to the neighboring mountain town would be
> "protected".

> Why would/should any toll calls be protected from competition?

    Charging business more to subsidize residence service is
politically correct.  With the growth of competition, political
correctness is slowly giving way to economic reality.


William J. Earl              [e-mail]
Digital Sight and Sound Division  415-390-2128
Mail Stop 1L-945          FAX [phone]
Silicon Graphics, Inc.

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End of TELECOM Digest V13 #590
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