Dr. Sidney Schaefer : "You know, one thing I learned from my patients ... they all hate the phone company. It's interesting -- even the stockholders of the phone company hate the phone company!" (James Coburn) - "The President's Analyst" (1967)
that was back in the days when the phone company was a monopoly. Now, in our glorious future, free markets and competition have made phone companies so much better. 😒
@SpinozasHeresy @lauren
Of course, long ago, pre-1984, there was an effective consensus among Federal gov't, state PUCs and the Bell System that universal service was a Good Thing, requiring that urban/suburban/business accounts subsidize rural and poorer residential areas.
(This is akin to the USPS of course.)
Now, for example see Felicity Barringer's fine article: https://andthewest.stanford.edu/2020/by-land-or-sky-rural-western-communities-seek-an-elusive-good-broadband-internet-access/
@SpinozasHeresy @lauren
During 1978-80, I managed development of a Bell Labs system to track problems in cables(i.e., from switch out to subscriber) and their costs, as such things are hard to automate away and they are expensive. I'm not surprised they want to delete wireline.
A lot of people thought competition would take care of it, but local loops are almost always natural monopolies. PUCs have to regulate appropriately, not always easy.
Note of course, AT&T (now) is not the pre-84 AT&T.
@JohnMashey @SpinozasHeresy That's what I keep telling people, that ATT-then is not ATT-now! Hmm, so you're the guy I can blame for those 3am bell taps?
@lauren @SpinozasHeresy
1/ Not me... but another story from the old days. I inherited management of software (TREAT) that tracked all troubles (not just cables), such as squirrel bites, gunshots (South & Maine), downed trees, water in cables, etc, etc, and metrics like closure times and repeat-report rates (i.e., where one had to call more than once). These were reported to PUCs and affected district managers' bonuses, i.e., taken seriously.
@JohnMashey @SpinozasHeresy "Taken Seriously" == "The Bell System" aka, the old AT&T.
@lauren @SpinozasHeresy
2/ I was having trouble with my phone in NJ, intermittent, seemed likely water in cable, but it kept not getting fixed. To be fair, those can be hard. But finally, I called again, told the operator "Please tell your district manager that if this doesn't get fixed, their TREAT E2700 repeat report rate will go through the roof and stay there." That was like a magic incantation that told the boss I knew exactly how to zero their bonus. It suddenly got higher priority.
@JohnMashey @SpinozasHeresy LOL. In my experience, I could indeed usually attain higher levels of service from any telco by using terminology that made it clear I knew what I was talking about. Even just using terms like "demarc" was often enough.
@lauren @JohnMashey @SpinozasHeresy
In the early 1970s when I was around 14 years old I was on a very rural party line that had stopped working after a lightning storm. I took a clip-on handset and went to our nearest neighbor a half mile upstream of us on the line; their phone was also out. I opened the little box at the base of their pole and found vaporized fuses.
1/2
@lauren @JohnMashey @SpinozasHeresy
I jumpered across the fuses and was able to call my mother at home; then we both got on the line with the "114" repair service. They were talking about sending someone out five days later to fix it. My mother was not happy about that, but they wouldn't budge.
Finally I said, "That's OK mom, I think I can fix it", upon which the repair guy got very animated. They had someone out that afternoon.
2/2
@weaselx86 @JohnMashey @SpinozasHeresy I have a funny story about General Telephone and fuses. But not right now.
@lauren @SpinozasHeresy
3/ While the old Bell System could sometimes be rough, there actually was a unique ability to respond to big problems, like:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_New_York_Telephone_exchange_fire
and there was a real service ethic. I spent a lot of time in Boston on field trials. Managers told me that if they were having fights with unions (rare) and there was a strike, they'd hope for a big snowstorm, as outside plant repair folks would show up to help out.
@lauren @SpinozasHeresy
4/ I was lucky to spend a month in New England in the Operating Company Assignment Program (OCAP). You had to ask for this, and some places were harder to get than others. A group of ~dozen BTL engineers would spend a month in a telco, visiting every department, with idea that they'd get us out of the "ivory tower" into the real world. It was a great experience.
@lauren @SpinozasHeresy
The telco picked where we went each day. For outside plant repair (the cables) I rode with 2 guys watching them fixing problems in Dorchester-Roxbury (which in 1978 was perhaps a bit rough. They said they always went in teams of 2.)
Net day, for inside repair guy took me to oldest switchboard in Boston, a house owned Reverend Sun Myung Moon, and other odd places. I asked the guy if they saved these up for when BTLers would be there. He laughed and admitted it.
@lauren @SpinozasHeresy
6/ A bit later, we did the first field trial of software, in Boston. New England Tel decided we should do the first one on Dorchester-Roxbury.
Then we did the second field trial in Southwest Bell.
When we arrived in St Louis, the first thing they told us was "Of course, we don't do things the way those Yankees in Boston do.) They also drawled "We're just simple country boys" which told me to be careful.
Of course, that became SBC and then the current AT&T.
@JohnMashey @SpinozasHeresy It's like Haney's Telco from "Green Acres".
Don't take Ma Bell away from me
I've gotten used to monopoly
When they divest, then I'll be blue
Yes, breaking up is hard on you
@SpinozasHeresy I refer to my parody song of long ago, "The Day Bell System Died".