IP: Pac Bell says Net use may collapse phone system

[mikebw@bilow.bilow.uu.ids.net (Mike Bilow)]

  Dave Reid wrote in a message to Mike Bilow:
  
   DR> 1 residential line consumes 3 CCS on average, while 1 ISP
   DR> line consumes 36 CCS on average.
  
  This is equivalent to asserting that all ISP lines are always in use, which is
  not true.  The ISP is as hamstring by the peak demand problem as is the
  telephone company, since the ISP has to buy lines and modems to satisfy peak
  demand and this equipment will tend to sit idle otherwise.  (Note that we are
  talking about lines serving casual dial-up users, not those who use a dial-up
  line for a permanent circuit.)
  
  While an ISP could provide lines and modems at a level below that required to
  meet peak demand, this would result in customers getting busy signals during
  peak conditions, and this would quickly cost them customers.  Therefore, an ISP
  probably has usage characteristics roughly comparable to any other heavy
  business user of dial-up telephone service.
  
   DR> Therefore the fixed resource consumption is over 10 times as 
   DR> much for an ISP line. The calling rate per line is not the big 
   DR> issue, it's the holding time. While a call is up a 64k digital 
   DR> channel is being held up thourgh the fabric of the switching 
   DR> network. Rates are based on CCS consumption. Should an ISP pay 
   DR> ten times as much for a line than a residential customer? 
   DR> Should a residential customer pay more if they are having long 
   DR> holding times? Why should a normal voice only residenital 
   DR> customer pay more to subsidize long holding pattern callers? 
   DR> Cleary there needs to more emphazize on a user pay structure to 
   DR> allow greater investment in switching plant to occur. 
  
  You have to base rates on something, but the whole point is that the rate
  structure is irrational.  The problem itself is caused by the telephone company
  encouraging the use of circuit-switched carriage for data rather than
  data-switched carriage, as this ISDN list frequently discusses.  It's absurd
  for the telephone companies to turn around and blame their customers for doing
  exactly what they were given incentives to do.
  
  Switching capacity is still very cheap compared to laying real wire.  When
  people start adding second phone lines for data use, the telephone companies
  gloat about how this increases their revenue to record levels.  What did the
  telephone companies think people were going to do with these new data lines?
  
   DR> ISP's that underprovision thier lines and oversell their
   DR> accounts (no one does that right?) cause another headache
   DR> for the telco. Everytime a caller gets busy, they call back
   DR> again and again and again. This creates large volumes of
   DR> uncompleted calls all of which consume switch resources.
   DR> When an ISP's incoming line pool closely matches what their
   DR> requirements really are their impact on the switching fabric
   DR> is reduced.
  
  Maybe this would have been true 30 years ago, but the consumption of resources
  required to attempt a call failed on busy is fairly minimal.  The main problem
  is that the caller is off-hook demanding attention.  However, the inter-switch
  communication needed to fail the call is trivial, since the circuit is not set
  up until and unless the call succeeds.  That "busy signal" you hear is locally
  generated, not piped down from the destination switch.
  
   DR> Seems to me we need more cooperation between the telco and ISP 
   DR> communitty. Both need each other. The ISP's can't currently 
   DR> survive without the Telco's lines and the Telco's need the 
   DR> extra renevue generated by the growth in local loop utilization 
   DR> that occurs both at the ISP end and the residential end. 
  
  This is an insane proposal.  The telephone companies view ISPs as competitors,
  and they would like to use their monopoly positions to squash ISPs for as long
  as those monopoly positions exist and to whatever extent they are allowed by
  regulators to get away with it.
  
  If the telephone companies had free reign, the Internet would be reduced to one
  official server site with a per minute charge, accessed only by client machines
  with a TouchTone(R) keypad for a user interface and rented monthly.  If you
  think I'm exaggerating, ask people in France.
   
  -- Mike
  
  
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