Agenda - 10-21-1986 - Laserfiche WebLink

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General Telephone of the South, in its short filing of August 28, 1986, seems to disclaim any ability of its own to provide for the quality of its service to AT&T and Central, both of which contract with General for connections between subscribers and the long distance environment. General says that "Any such plan (s) [contingency and diversity] would need to be the responsibility of AT&T-C in concert with the involved local exchange companies." And it. cites that it "is restricted, by Federal Order, in its participation in the toll environment." We firmly believe that the above synopsis points to weak and confusing contractual relationships between the companies that bring about inadequate and unreliable service, contrary to standards set out both in State law and in Commission policy. One can only conclude that Central, General and AT&T each seem to believe that it is the others' primary responsibility to see that the subscriber has adequate and reliable long distance service. We see AT&T admitting its part of the problem and promising substantive modifications. We see Central and General focusing quite narrowly on the symptom, ignoring the bigger issue, that there -will be system failures and as local exchange companies, they must provide adequate and reliable service in a way that their service, and their access to other carriers' service, survives such kinds of failures; that access to a non-functioning node is not access at all. I. Therefore, we respectfully request that the North Carolina Utilities Commission order: 1) That Central and AT&T negotiate direct connections for - interLATA services and, if necessary, that Central be given the authority to construct facilities for direct connection to AT&T's Point of Presence, even if that Point of Presence is not located in Central' s serving area. 2) That Central accelerate the scheduled installation of its new digital local office in Hillsborough for the purpose of supporting these direct connections as soon as possible. 3) That both Central and General construct any new interLATA channels to a different AT&T Point of Presence. to gain higher availability and reliability through a minimum of two physically separated paths. Point 2 of the Commission's August 11, 1986 order calls for reports of toll service outages and for tests and reports on intraLATA and interLATA call completions for a period of six months. II . Therefore, we respectfully request: _ 1) That this docket remain open to review the results of the reports and of the test calls. 2) That the Commission modify its order to call for staggering times for calling into Hillsborough test numbers, and for direct 3