Agenda - 10-21-1986 - Laserfiche WebLink

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for days must be seen as a symptom of greater problems that the laws of North Carolina, the regulations of the Utilities Commission and- the operating practices of the entrusted carriers must address and solve. Either the Utilities Commission must order substantial changes in inter-company operating policies,- procedures, and network connectivity for the regulated companies, or the public must be advised to substantially downgrade its expectations of availability and dependability of telephone service as provided by Central, General, and AT&T. Consideration pf the responses. . First, AT&T has responded by describing its design, development, and implementation of a seven-point plan: "As a result of the meeting [with Orange County's task force] , AT&T has undertaken several actions to assure itself and the customers it serves in the Orange County, Durham and Raleigh areas that high quality service is • provided on a continuous basis." We note the deployment of network changes, in design and in both hardware and software. In Section II, item 2 (page 14) AT&T says it 'contracts with General Telephone of the South -(GTS) whereby. GTS provides interLATA switching to AT&T through GTS's toll center at Durham . . . for guaranteed switching capacity measured by equivalent voice circuit terminations required to provide for the interLATA demand." AT&T offers, in point 6 (page 4) , "to work with the Local Exchange Companies (LECs) to evaluate alternative serving arrangements . .. including direct connection from a planned new local switch in Hillsborough to AT&T's Point of Presence (POP) . These alternative serving arrangements are access facilities which are a matter for ultimate determination by the Local Exchange Companies." Central, in its September 11, 1986 response, says it 'is primarily responsible for local access service [and it] recognizes this responsibility to its customers for the provision of total service." Central also says that "General Telephone of the South (General) provides access to the interLATA and intraLATA long distance networks through its Durham toll center." And further notes that "It is Central's responsibility to represent its customers with General, Southern Bell and AT&T. This is exactly what Central did during . . . [the outages by] communicating] with different levels of management and non-management- personnel both with AT&T and General to secure an immediate and lasting resolution to the frequent interruptions in long distance services experienced by Central's Hillsborough customers." We strongly note that Central's method did not produce an immediate . resolution to what it described as frequent interruptions in long distance service. Moreover, Central has disclosed no effort to strengthen its network interconnection to interLATA and intraLATA carriers, and that it continues to want to operate with the same set of failure-mode plans which clearly did not provide timely relief to its subscribers during this failure and, one must assume, will not provide such protection in future failures. - 2