OT>> Bell Atlantic Maintains Monopoly, Blocks Consumer Choice Through Widespread Systems, Quality Failures for Competitors
November 6, 1998
NEW YORK, Nov. 5 Challenging Bell
Atlantic's (NYSE: BEL) claims that it has
opened its local telephone monopoly to real
competition, AT&T (NYSE: T) today
provided detailed evidence of systemic
failures in virtually all aspects of Bell
Atlantic's provisioning operations that
competitors need to serve New York
consumers with improved and lower cost
local telephone service.
In a filing with the New York State Public
Service Commission (NYPSC), AT&T cites
numerous instances of Bell Atlantic missing
installation deadlines, prematurely cutting
off dial-tone for some customers switching
to AT&T, and refusing to address service
problems.
"We can minimize the adverse impact of Bell
Atlantic's deplorable performance when
we're dealing with a handful of orders for
large business by spending a lot of time,
effort and money," said Michael Morrissey,
AT& T's vice president of law and
government affairs. "But for AT&T, or any
other Competitive Local Exchange Company,
to effectively move substantial numbers of
smaller customers -- particularly residential
consumers and small businesses -- from Bell
Atlantic's network to its own requires
efficient, reliable systems and processes to
assure that customers receive continuous
service.
"Bell Atlantic has demonstrated that it
cannot yet handle the task at hand and the
independent NYPSC test as currently
structured does not address these
problems, but we wouldn't be surprised if
the test is amended to include these
operational issues."
In fact, AT&T said, Bell Atlantic failed to
meet basic five-day service-delivery
deadlines, an industry standard, about 95
percent of the time during the last three
months. Its actual service-delivery interval
over this three-month period was more than
15 days.
"Unless Bell Atlantic is made to address
these serious problems, the vast majority of
consumers in the Empire State will never be
able to enjoy the benefits of competitive
local telephone services," said Morrissey. At
issue is the implementation of procedures
and work performance that determine
whether customers who have opted to
switch local service providers can be
transitioned, or "cut over," to their new
carrier of choice without fear of service
disruptions.
Since concluding its merger with Teleport
Communications Group in July, AT& T began
to send hundreds of "cut over" orders for
business customers to Bell Atlantic each
month. While far short of the tens of
thousands of such orders that Bell Atlantic
would be expected to process in a fully
competitive consumer marketplace, the
requests provide some insights into Bell
Atlantic's inability to handle these orders on
a commercial basis, Morrissey said. The
data compiled by AT&T and filed with the
NYSPSC show that Bell Atlantic cannot
deliver service within intervals that could be
considered commercially reasonable or
nondiscriminatory. For example:
-- Bell Atlantic is supposed to provide a firm
commitment of service
delivery to AT&T within 48 hours of
receiving an order. It is late
more than 85 percent of the time, with
actual average intervals ranging
from six to 10 days.
-- Bell Atlantic's firm order commitment is
supposed to provide AT&T with
a date on which the cut over is promised,
so AT&T can perform its part
of the cut over and inform the customer
when to expect AT&T service.
Bell has been late in meeting its own
committed due dates, on average,
46 percent of the time. Its delivery is late
by an average of more
than three days. Delays of this sort could
cause serious disruption to
customer service, and in some cases would
leave consumers with no local
telephone service whatsoever, AT&T said.
-- Other Bell Atlantic systems also perform
poorly. A recent AT&T review
found 15 percent of all lines switched to
AT&T service by Bell Atlantic
were improperly deleted from Bell Atlantic's
directory assistance
databases. While AT&T can manually
monitor this problem and get Bell
Atlantic to properly list a small number of
business orders, it will be
impossible to do this for thousands of
consumer orders.
"We now have empirical evidence that Bell
Atlantic's failures are preventing consumers
from having a competitive choice by
preventing mass-market competition for
consumers in the local market from taking
root," said Morrissey. "As a result of these
and other problems with Bell Atlantic's
systems and processes, and despite great
efforts by AT&T to overcome these
problems, we believe that Bell Atlantic
causes a serious service disruption to at
least one in every four customer lines it has
cut over for AT&T."
While AT&T has been forced to incur
substantial additional expense to ensure
that these business customers receive the
quality of service to which they are
entitled, neither AT&T nor any other local
service competitor could sustain such
disruptions in serving the mass market for
consumers and small businesses. Bell
Atlantic is, quite simply, blocking the
benefits of competition for the vast majority
of New York consumers.
SOURCE AT&T |
