F
Floyd L. Davidson
Guest
"Tom Kunich" <[email protected]> wrote:
>"Floyd L. Davidson" <[email protected]> wrote:
>> "Tom Kunich" <[email protected]> wrote:
>> >"Floyd L. Davidson" <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>> >> Actually your telephone service has decreased in cost and
>> >> increased in functionality (the later by a few orders of
>> >> magnitude) over the past 2-3 decades.
^^^^^^^^^^^
See that? What I said was the last 20 to 30 years. That is,
basically what has happened since 1970. And notice there isn't
a word there about divestiture, though the dates do happen to
bracket the fact of divestiture.
>> >Perhaps you could outline that to someone who once owned an interconnect
>> >company because I don't see telephone company supplied answering machines,
>> >call forwarding and caller ID as increases in functionality. And my basic
>> >phone bill is three times what it was before deregulation.
>>
>> So your phone bill hasn't changed at all, considering inflation.
>> Yet I'll bet you *use* it a lot more. You can also send data at
>> rates many times the 110 baud that was common once. You can
>> send a FAX too, with equipment costing less than $100 instead of
>> several thousands. You can call from you car if you break down
>> on the way home. You can take a satellite phone to almost
>> anywhere too. And have 10 or 20 party conference calls.
>
>Excuse me but all of those services were available before the phone company
>was broken up. And they were available from private companies. As for the
You are excused. And your point is tossed. First, I said
nothing about the break up of the Bell System, and secondly
those were *not* available at reasonable price, and in some
cases simply didn't exist at all.
In the 1960's you could not buy digital services faster than 56
kbps, and a Bell 303 to do that cost a small fortune (and came in
a rack too!)
The only "FAX" machine available was called a "Flexowriter", if
I remember right, and was thousands of dollars.
The closest equivalent of a cell phone was a "mobile phone" in
your car, and again only the very wealthy needed to even look.
Satellite phones of course did not exist at all. The average
satellite earth station was costing about $1 /million/ dollars
to build, and wasn't exactly portable.
As I said, over the past 20-30 years the price has dropped,
considering inflation; and the functionality has increased by
orders of magnitude.
And even though I didn't explicitly tie that to the break up of
the Bell System, it is a fact that our ability to make use of
new technology at the pace we have been since 1984 has indeed
been enhanced by divestiture.
The most obvious place where that is true is in the area of
digital switching. Nortel (then known as Northern Telecom Inc.)
was unable to sell switching systems to ATT (there is one
DMS-200 switch in the entire ATT domestic long distance network
today, which is otherwise made of of something like 136 4E
switches). But local telephone companies flocked to Nortel, to
the tune of about a 40% market penetration. Given that for most
of the late 1970's and up until about 1990 Nortel's DMS digital
switches were technically (just slightly) more advanced than the
equivalents from ATT, it seems very likely that without that
competition the innovation from even ATT would have lagged far
behind what actually took place. (Nortel, for example, came out
with the first fully digital switching system, where even the
switching fabric itself was solid state digital devices rather
than mechanical relays.)
>cost of this stuff - the price reduction in phone equipment had absolutely
>NOTHING to do with the break up of the phone company and everything to do
>with increasing integration of electronics.
That has no significance to my original statement, but the fact
is you are mostly correct, but not totally. The cost reductions
are as you state. The fact that we *have* the use of that
technology is probably very much tied to divestiture. Even as
it was, in 1984 getting anyone steeped in the Bell System way of
doing business to purchase a switching system that had a life
expectancy of less than 15 years was nearly impossible! Nortel,
for example, would not even tell them that it was just a big
computer system. They *insisted* is was "maintenance free", and
therefore would not discuss maintenance methods (such as
networking auxiliary administrative computers to the switching
system) _unless_ the telephone company demanded it... meaning
most telco managers had no idea that such a thing could be done,
and if advised of it reacted exactly like the Pointy Haired Boss
in a Dilbert cartoon (which Scott Adams, Dilbert's creator,
designed based on his work as an ISDN software engineer for
PacBell).
I thought *my* supervisors and managers were recalcitrant PHB's
until I went to a maintenance school on DMS switching systems,
and found out that just /executing/ a shell script on a switch
was a *firing offense* in most telephone companies! (I was
working on an Autovon switch at the time, and had implemented a
shell program to do automatic trunk testing, because that
functionality was not part of the Autovon feature package. Most
companies would have fired me for doing that.)
>Moreover, the phone company
>would presently have competition from Cell Phones and Internet Phones both
>of which circumvent the monopoly on land lines that the phone company
>enjoyed.
Neither of them could have begun by circumventing the monopoly.
If the monopoly had stayed in place, they would have been delayed
for years.
Cell phones and dialup ISPs both interface with the PSTN, and
would have been impossible for a 3rd party to implement prior to
the Carterphone decision. The degree to which they indeed have
been able to circumvent the establishment is *because* of
Carterphone and eventually Judge Green's Modified Final Judgment
breaking up Ma Bell. And the reason circumventing was necessary
was simply that Bell System "telephone company" style
management, which was rampant within the industry (and still is
to a much lesser degree) simply could not adapt.
There is one really good example which demonstrates that. ISDN
is a high speed digital protocol that was available in the
middle 1980's. It would have, say in 1985, provided 64 or 128
Kbps digital connectivity in place of the newly emerging 2400
bps modems. What did the telephone companies say? "Who's going
to pay for implementation? There is no market!" (Telco's had
no idea what a BBS was, never mind knowing what The Internet
might be!)
Hence the telcom industry did not implement ISDN (It Still Does
Nothing), except on a narrow basis for the Federal Telephone
System (a remote National Park Service office in Nome Alaska had
ISDN that a business in New York City couldn't get!).
But other people did see a market. The *modem* *industry* spent
millions on R&D, came up with ways to implement the existing
v.32 standard at an affordable price; then spent more millions
(and made even more millions) developing v.34 and the v.90
modems. In addition the TV Cable industry realized they had a
way to deliver high speed digital services, and also developed a
hugely profitable Internet delivery system. Everyone but the
telephone companies got a slice of that pie!
And today, It Still Does Nothing. "Who's going to pay for the
implementation?" Everyone got a piece of that pie except the
telephone industry.
The reason that happened is simply that the upper levels of
telephone company management were filled with people who
learned, and were very capable, in a world where long distance
message traffic paid the bills. Jerking telco management away
from people who were successful in an ATT Long Lines environment
took decades (see the history of how many CEO's ATT had back in
the late 1990's! That is *exactly* what they were doing.).
>The phone company was broken up in 1982. The inflation since that time was
1984, to be pedantic.
>about 91%. Explain how my tripled local line charge quantitatively equates
>to being cheaper.
I said tripled over 30 years. Go back a bit farther... pre-1974.
>> Not to mention that today a trans-continental telephone
>> conversation with Grandma sounds just exactly the same as if she
>> were in the house next door.
>
>When was it that you think that T1 was invented?
The late 1930's as a matter of fact. But that is insignificant.
The import of the concept wasn't understood until Claude Shannon
published his work on a mathematical theory of information in
the late 1940's. And even then there was no way to implement
it. Bell Labs was just discovering solid state electronics, and
it was not until the 1960's that T1 carrier systems were put
into service. Of course, T1 carrier *didn't* accomplish the
above noted "next door" effect for long distance for another
couple of decades.
Fiber optics, using T1, was actually what brought on that effect!
>> The list could go on and on...
>
>Since it is bogus I suppose that you could write anything at all. But since
>I was designing telephone switches for awhile and later installing them
>commercially I think that I have some idea of the business.
It sounds to me like you were, and still are, part of the
problem. You don't seem to have a balanced understanding of the
history, and I can imagine you saying "Who's going to pay for
it? There is no market!", not just for ISDN, but for almost
everything... ;-)
--
Floyd L. Davidson <http://web.newsguy.com/floyd_davidson>
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska) [email protected]
>"Floyd L. Davidson" <[email protected]> wrote:
>> "Tom Kunich" <[email protected]> wrote:
>> >"Floyd L. Davidson" <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>> >> Actually your telephone service has decreased in cost and
>> >> increased in functionality (the later by a few orders of
>> >> magnitude) over the past 2-3 decades.
^^^^^^^^^^^
See that? What I said was the last 20 to 30 years. That is,
basically what has happened since 1970. And notice there isn't
a word there about divestiture, though the dates do happen to
bracket the fact of divestiture.
>> >Perhaps you could outline that to someone who once owned an interconnect
>> >company because I don't see telephone company supplied answering machines,
>> >call forwarding and caller ID as increases in functionality. And my basic
>> >phone bill is three times what it was before deregulation.
>>
>> So your phone bill hasn't changed at all, considering inflation.
>> Yet I'll bet you *use* it a lot more. You can also send data at
>> rates many times the 110 baud that was common once. You can
>> send a FAX too, with equipment costing less than $100 instead of
>> several thousands. You can call from you car if you break down
>> on the way home. You can take a satellite phone to almost
>> anywhere too. And have 10 or 20 party conference calls.
>
>Excuse me but all of those services were available before the phone company
>was broken up. And they were available from private companies. As for the
You are excused. And your point is tossed. First, I said
nothing about the break up of the Bell System, and secondly
those were *not* available at reasonable price, and in some
cases simply didn't exist at all.
In the 1960's you could not buy digital services faster than 56
kbps, and a Bell 303 to do that cost a small fortune (and came in
a rack too!)
The only "FAX" machine available was called a "Flexowriter", if
I remember right, and was thousands of dollars.
The closest equivalent of a cell phone was a "mobile phone" in
your car, and again only the very wealthy needed to even look.
Satellite phones of course did not exist at all. The average
satellite earth station was costing about $1 /million/ dollars
to build, and wasn't exactly portable.
As I said, over the past 20-30 years the price has dropped,
considering inflation; and the functionality has increased by
orders of magnitude.
And even though I didn't explicitly tie that to the break up of
the Bell System, it is a fact that our ability to make use of
new technology at the pace we have been since 1984 has indeed
been enhanced by divestiture.
The most obvious place where that is true is in the area of
digital switching. Nortel (then known as Northern Telecom Inc.)
was unable to sell switching systems to ATT (there is one
DMS-200 switch in the entire ATT domestic long distance network
today, which is otherwise made of of something like 136 4E
switches). But local telephone companies flocked to Nortel, to
the tune of about a 40% market penetration. Given that for most
of the late 1970's and up until about 1990 Nortel's DMS digital
switches were technically (just slightly) more advanced than the
equivalents from ATT, it seems very likely that without that
competition the innovation from even ATT would have lagged far
behind what actually took place. (Nortel, for example, came out
with the first fully digital switching system, where even the
switching fabric itself was solid state digital devices rather
than mechanical relays.)
>cost of this stuff - the price reduction in phone equipment had absolutely
>NOTHING to do with the break up of the phone company and everything to do
>with increasing integration of electronics.
That has no significance to my original statement, but the fact
is you are mostly correct, but not totally. The cost reductions
are as you state. The fact that we *have* the use of that
technology is probably very much tied to divestiture. Even as
it was, in 1984 getting anyone steeped in the Bell System way of
doing business to purchase a switching system that had a life
expectancy of less than 15 years was nearly impossible! Nortel,
for example, would not even tell them that it was just a big
computer system. They *insisted* is was "maintenance free", and
therefore would not discuss maintenance methods (such as
networking auxiliary administrative computers to the switching
system) _unless_ the telephone company demanded it... meaning
most telco managers had no idea that such a thing could be done,
and if advised of it reacted exactly like the Pointy Haired Boss
in a Dilbert cartoon (which Scott Adams, Dilbert's creator,
designed based on his work as an ISDN software engineer for
PacBell).
I thought *my* supervisors and managers were recalcitrant PHB's
until I went to a maintenance school on DMS switching systems,
and found out that just /executing/ a shell script on a switch
was a *firing offense* in most telephone companies! (I was
working on an Autovon switch at the time, and had implemented a
shell program to do automatic trunk testing, because that
functionality was not part of the Autovon feature package. Most
companies would have fired me for doing that.)
>Moreover, the phone company
>would presently have competition from Cell Phones and Internet Phones both
>of which circumvent the monopoly on land lines that the phone company
>enjoyed.
Neither of them could have begun by circumventing the monopoly.
If the monopoly had stayed in place, they would have been delayed
for years.
Cell phones and dialup ISPs both interface with the PSTN, and
would have been impossible for a 3rd party to implement prior to
the Carterphone decision. The degree to which they indeed have
been able to circumvent the establishment is *because* of
Carterphone and eventually Judge Green's Modified Final Judgment
breaking up Ma Bell. And the reason circumventing was necessary
was simply that Bell System "telephone company" style
management, which was rampant within the industry (and still is
to a much lesser degree) simply could not adapt.
There is one really good example which demonstrates that. ISDN
is a high speed digital protocol that was available in the
middle 1980's. It would have, say in 1985, provided 64 or 128
Kbps digital connectivity in place of the newly emerging 2400
bps modems. What did the telephone companies say? "Who's going
to pay for implementation? There is no market!" (Telco's had
no idea what a BBS was, never mind knowing what The Internet
might be!)
Hence the telcom industry did not implement ISDN (It Still Does
Nothing), except on a narrow basis for the Federal Telephone
System (a remote National Park Service office in Nome Alaska had
ISDN that a business in New York City couldn't get!).
But other people did see a market. The *modem* *industry* spent
millions on R&D, came up with ways to implement the existing
v.32 standard at an affordable price; then spent more millions
(and made even more millions) developing v.34 and the v.90
modems. In addition the TV Cable industry realized they had a
way to deliver high speed digital services, and also developed a
hugely profitable Internet delivery system. Everyone but the
telephone companies got a slice of that pie!
And today, It Still Does Nothing. "Who's going to pay for the
implementation?" Everyone got a piece of that pie except the
telephone industry.
The reason that happened is simply that the upper levels of
telephone company management were filled with people who
learned, and were very capable, in a world where long distance
message traffic paid the bills. Jerking telco management away
from people who were successful in an ATT Long Lines environment
took decades (see the history of how many CEO's ATT had back in
the late 1990's! That is *exactly* what they were doing.).
>The phone company was broken up in 1982. The inflation since that time was
1984, to be pedantic.
>about 91%. Explain how my tripled local line charge quantitatively equates
>to being cheaper.
I said tripled over 30 years. Go back a bit farther... pre-1974.
>> Not to mention that today a trans-continental telephone
>> conversation with Grandma sounds just exactly the same as if she
>> were in the house next door.
>
>When was it that you think that T1 was invented?
The late 1930's as a matter of fact. But that is insignificant.
The import of the concept wasn't understood until Claude Shannon
published his work on a mathematical theory of information in
the late 1940's. And even then there was no way to implement
it. Bell Labs was just discovering solid state electronics, and
it was not until the 1960's that T1 carrier systems were put
into service. Of course, T1 carrier *didn't* accomplish the
above noted "next door" effect for long distance for another
couple of decades.
Fiber optics, using T1, was actually what brought on that effect!
>> The list could go on and on...
>
>Since it is bogus I suppose that you could write anything at all. But since
>I was designing telephone switches for awhile and later installing them
>commercially I think that I have some idea of the business.
It sounds to me like you were, and still are, part of the
problem. You don't seem to have a balanced understanding of the
history, and I can imagine you saying "Who's going to pay for
it? There is no market!", not just for ISDN, but for almost
everything... ;-)
--
Floyd L. Davidson <http://web.newsguy.com/floyd_davidson>
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska) [email protected]
