> > From: Joe Portman <baron@ws4.aa.net>
> > > although it "may help" and it "sounds good"... dont you like a little
> > > order from the telco...
> > >
> > > line 1 - line 2 - line 3...
> >
> > Yup, we have a UCD huntgroup. IE, each new call starts one modem over from
> > the last one. Very nice, a hung modem will only affect one call.
> For those not up on their terminology, this is 'Uniform Call Distribution',
> consider what would happen if you had a customer service bank using the
> usual ISP 'linear hunting'- the first desk would get all the calls, and
> the guy at the last desk would never get any. UCD 'remembers' the last
> line it gave a call to, and uses the line AFTER that for the next caller.
> > Since no modem ever gets called twice in a row, they have plenty of time
> > to reset for the next call.
> That's something that hadn't occurred to me- with regular hunting, at
> busy times a caller is guaranteed to get a modem that just resetting after
> a disconnect, with UCD this can only occur very rarely.
> > Our lines answer on 1 (or less) rings just about every time. Customers
> > love it.
> Can you give us some idea what this extra feature costs? In Ameritechland,
> regular hunting is free, I haven't checked on the pricing for UCD lately.
Well, we are using MCI local services for all dialtone (and soon to be
primary ISDN as well as Frame Relay). I attended MCI's "rollout" party and
they expect to be in every major city by the end of 1997.
Their pricing for incoming lines is $13.50 per trunk. So far, no
installation charges and no charges for hunting. We have 150+ of their
lines and adding more like crazy. We are in the process of switching to
their digital services, which are quite a bit more, but we expect to start
seeing 0 (thats zero) modem related problems, well worth the cost.
Except for a couple of chinese fire drills on the installations, they are
very good at what they do. Customer response is very fast and they are
quite aware that I can switch over to their competition on a few days
notice.
They take _any_ complaint from me very seriously and run with it until
it's fixed, usually the same or next day. US Waste will usually not even
return my phone calls the same week. That's why I fired them. :-)
So far, the majority of our problems have been caused by US Worsts nasty
habit of underestimating the network facilities needed to route calls to
us through their interconnects. Fortunately, the WUTC here rules them with
an iron hand.
All in all, MCI is a pretty good company. Plus, they did assign me the
worlds coolest set of dialup numbers (see below).
Respectfully,
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Joe Portman - Alternate Access Inc. Affordable, Reliable Internet
baron@aa.net Seattle: (206) 443-3408 Seattle: (206) 777-7777
Tacoma: (206) 927-6010 Federal Way: (206) 838-8457
Bellevue: (206) 455-8414 Olympia: (360) 458-7279
Enumclaw: (206) 862-9423 Black Diamond : (206) 288-8809
For free trial account: set modem to 8-n-1, login as "new"
For questions or support, call our voice line (206) 728-9585.
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