Re: Wanted: Clueful Individual @ TeleGlobe.net

[Steve Gibbard <scg () gibbard org>]

When I was working for an ISP that got most of its dial-up lines from
CLECs, we ran into this sort of problem a lot.  Generally we would end up
with a situation where no customers off a given CO would be able to call
one of our phone numbers, instead either getting a fast busy, or such an
excessive error rate that they couldn't pass data effectively.  Having the
customer call Ameritech repair (Ameritech was the local ILEC) generally
resulted in Ameritech telling the customer that their line worked and the
problem must be somewhere else.  On the other hand, if I called the CLECs'
switch people, they could generally call the Ameritech call routing
people, who would find a problem somewhere in Ameritech's trunking and get
it fixed.

I'm not sure how this works if the companies involved are an RBOC and
MCIWorldcom.  I suppose it's possible that neither of them cares.  In many
cases, though, the solution seems to call the smallest company involved.
There are fewer layers to go through there before getting to the people
with clue, and the smaller companies have a lot to lose if they can't
connect calls to the bigger companies.

-Steve

On Tue, 25 Jul 2000, Jeff Mcadams wrote:

> Also sprach Hal Murray
> > I considered calling the PUC to see how things like that should get
> > handled but didn't get around to it. 
>
> Unfortunatly, its been my experience that the PUCs are not in much
> better shape when trying to figure out how something like this should be
> handled than someone like many people on this list that have a large
> amount of experience dealing with the telco network.  I'm really coming
> to the conclusion, having worked with Kentucky's PUC (Public Service
> Commission here) quite a bit in the past year, that they are very good
> intentioned, but just don't have detailed issues like this get brought
> up to them very often.  I've been watching some of the cases that have
> been coming before the KY PSC recently, and it can get quite
> humorous...not to play them down, but there's a lot of joe blow consumer
> residential phone customer saying that they shouldn't have to pay their
> phone bill for some contrived reason or another...usually phone bill
> totals in the double digits...nothing earth shattering.  There are the
> slamming cases that get brought before them quite a bit, but very rarely
> are there real, significant, telecom policy impacting, convoluted
> technical issues types of cases brought before at least the KY PSC...of
> course we are kind of in an area that doesn't have a huge reputation for
> being technologically advanced (yes, I *am* wearing shoes!  ;) but it is
> rather interesting for the *lack* of significant cases in this realm.
> -- 
> Jeff McAdams                            Email: jeffm () iglou com
> Head Network Administrator              Voice: (502) 966-3848
> IgLou Internet Services                        (800) 436-4456

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Steve Gibbard                           scg () gibbard org      
+1 415 738-4178                         http://www.gibbard.org/~scg