At 12:11 PM 7/18/00 -0400, Robert Cannon wrote:
I am curious how often you think that ATT telephone long distance would hand traffic off to MCI telephone long distance. My impression of telephone long distance is that it is largely an end to end service (one of the great differences from the Internet). That as far as long distance goes, there is not a great deal traffic hand off (one exception is times of network trouble where carriers have agreements to hand off traffic to maintain network reliability).
First, I said in my post that the exact example given might not be very common. However, I am afraid you are mistaken. A huge number of phone calls go through multiple carries, especially for over-seas communications. My last company was founded strictly to sell bulk long distance minutes to other telcos like Sprint, AT&T, and Worldcom. [SNIP]
Point: You cannot say "every" call has certain fees. The telephone network gets more diverse by the moment.
Please forgive the miscommunication. The point is, on the "telco networks", every all has someone paying someone else. There is no such thing as free peering. And there are no such things as "upstreams" and "downstreams".
If there is a trouble with the service in the pacbell network, what exactly do you want bell south to do about it? I guess I an not sure I understand.
PacBell obviously cannot affect repairs on Bell South owned equipment. However, as a Pac Bell user, I can call Pac Bell, and they will notify Bell South, and Bell South will listen. Just like all telco problems, Bell South might not actually fix anything, but at least they will take a ticket and pretend that they care. :) Another point which has been noted in this thread it that a lot of this has to do with regulation, not just because someone is being paid. I would rather the Internet not be regulated as the telcos are, and that is why I think we need better inter-provider communication. If the Internet becomes a "utility" - like power, water, phone, etc. - then there is a danger that the "public" will make the government regulate us if they have any fear this new utility will not be 100% reliable. The more we can do to help customers at least *feel* like we are trying to fix their problems and help them, the less likely this will be.
Robert Cannon
TTFN, patrick