While SBC Communications, Inc. often faces charges of putting up legal hurdles to competition, other regional Bell operating companies, as well as GTE Corp., are accused of hampering competition in ways that amount to negligence or incompetence.
BellSouth Corp. has a reputation among some competitive local exchange carriers (CLEC) as being easy to negotiate with, but having poor follow-up on implementation. For example, the Bell incorrectly provisioned trunk lines between one of its own switches and an American Communications Services, Inc. (ACSI) switch, both in downtown Columbus, Ga., according to Bill McKee, ACSI general manager for the area.
Users who switched over to ACSI found they couldn't hear people on the other end of the line on incoming calls. About 150 customers were affected, and ACSI ended up losing 12 business customers, McKee says.
Although the problem was resolved in April, and BellSouth and ACSI say such incidents are less frequent now, McKee fears the damage was done. "In small cities word of mouth is very strong, and if word gets out that 'ACSI got my service down,' it can make a lasting impression."
But outside of SBC, US WEST, Inc. is probably the biggest lightning rod for criticism. Leonard Conn, president of Internet service provider IoNET, Inc., has had such bad experiences with US WEST in Phoenix that he ditched plans to expand in Arizona.
"It'll be a cold day in hell before I get into another US WEST market," says Conn, his normally calm voice tightening up. "The company is robbing people of business opportunities."
Among Conn's experiences was an episode last January, when US WEST fixed a circuit that had been been faulty since May 1996. The repair work was done in about an hour but the lines linked to the circuit were left down for two and a half days. IoNET had to appeal to US WEST executives out-of-state and threaten a lawsuit before local technicians turned the lines on again. As a result, IoNET lost about $20,000 because it had to reimburse its customers for the entire month.
US WEST officials, like their counterparts at other RBOCs, chalk such problems up to the complexity of opening their networks to competitors.
Making the required changes required to the network and operations support systems for billing and ordering throughout US WEST's 14-state region, "is an incredibly sophisticated task" that requires "millions of changes in computer instructions," says Jerry Brown, a company spokesman. "It's more complex than putting a probe on Mars."
In general, delays in line provisioning, which CLECs report by the dozens, are the result of demand brought on by the extraordinary growth in the number of ISPs and a lack of adequate forecasting of this expansion, according to Terry Dodd, manager of US WEST interconnection services for Washington. "Manufacturers can't build switches as fast as we need them," he says.
