Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!texbell!vector!telecom-gateway From: simpact.com!jeh%sdcsvax@ucsd.edu Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Some Comments On The GTE "Problem" in California Message-ID:Date: 25 Sep 89 16:21:06 GMT Sender: news@vector.Dallas.TX.US Organization: Simpact Associates, San Diego CA Lines: 82 Approved: telecom-request@vector.dallas.tx.us X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@vector.dallas.tx.us X-TELECOM-Digest: volume 9, issue 407, message 1 of 6 In article , kitty!larry@uunet.uu.net (Larry Lippman) writes: > I admit that I have had no firsthand experience with GTE in California... Then why, may I ask, are you saying anything at all on the subject? Ask anybody who's had the misfortune to live in a GTE area in SoCal. I have. (I mean I've lived there, not just asked someone else.) The telephone "service", if I may use the term lightly, was abominable. I personally experienced all of the horrors described by others here (lousy call completion rate, wildly wrong numbers, noisy-and-not-just-white-noise lines), and then some. One aspect of GTE SoCal that I haven't seen mentioned is their pay phones. I once spent a miserable two days looking for an apartment in the west/ southwest LA area (almost all covered by GTE), driving around with a car full of newspapers and a pocketful of dimes. It got so I wouldn't even bother stopping at a GTE pay phone unless there were at least two of them together, as only then was it likely that I'd find a single working phone. The defective phones were in nice areas and had no signs of exterior damage -- they just didn't work. Often they'd be sitting there emitting strange clicking and thunking noises, as if they couldn't quite digest that last coin. Others would appear to be fine until you put a dime in. About three out of four of these would deign to provide a dial tone. About three out of four of THOSE would actually give a ringback signal after you'd dialed your number... (yes, GTE was charging 20 cents, on average, for pay phone calls LONG before it was authorized by the PUC!) I know a fair number of people for whom Pacific Telephone vs. GTE was a factor in choosing a place to live -- and not the least important factor by far. Oh, and then there was the "GTE Phone Center" in Del Amo mall, which opened at 9 AM and closed promptly at 6 PM on weekdays, and was not open at all on weekends. I had to visit this place at least twice to establish phone service. I got off work at 5 PM, at (roughly) Wilshire and Crenshaw. This is a thirty-minute drive under the best of conditions (say, at 2 AM). Good luck! Apparently these people had never heard of households where both people work, nor of making their company easy to do business with. > The apparatus will indeed do the job - but in the situations which > you describe it is PEOPLE who have let the apparatus down and caused these > service problems. So what? When I say that "GTE gives lousy phone service in the LA area", I am not complaining about the equipment, the wiring, the management, or the color of their trucks. I'm complaining about the whole picture. I don't know what the underlying reason is, and for the most part, I DON'T CARE! I just want things to improve! > Now, the burning question is how could GTE allow this to happen in > California? The most reasonable answer just appeared in telecom article > by goldstein@delni.enet.dec.com, > and boils down to not having enough revenue to operate a telephone company > in a reasonable manner. > > $> The California PUC historically has given GTE (and the old PacTel) > $> very low ROI, often a couple of percentage points or more below > $> everybody else. When most states were allowing 13% and California was > $> allowing 10%, which state would YOU invest in? To make matters worse, > $> C-PUC would penalize GTE for its poor performance by lowering its ROI > $> even more. > $> > $> AT&T was too proud of its "Bell System" reputation to let PacTel go > $> down the tubes, so they dumped money into CA even with a cruddy rate > $> of return. But GTE had other fish to fry with its cash, so they gave > $> the state pretty much what it paid for. One might ask why GTE wasn't equally concerned about THEIR reputation. The GTE logo is prominent on many products sold in the commercial and consumer sectors. The Los Angeles area is not exactly devoid of customers for such products. My experiences with GTE phone service would definitely make me wary of anything else with the GTE logo. Yes, I know, different parts of the company... but if they don't care about QC in one division, why should I believe that others are any different? --- Jamie Hanrahan