Comparing 800 Number/TLD Shared Database

["Robert T. Nelson" <rnelson@internoc.com>]

For all of you who are interested in the Shared Repository/Shared Database
idea for DNS, I am reposting a Small Telephone Company's viewpoint of how
well Bellcore's Shared 800 Number Repository works. And how much it
fosters competition, or rather, doesn't.

I hope that gTLD-MoU supporters will take serious note of this article,
and seek to address issues of similarity between the two systems.

I do not suggest by posting this that I think that 800 Numbers and DNS are
roughly equivalent, or analogous or anything like that. I suggest that the
shared 800 Number Database is similar in theory to a Shared TLD Database,
and I urge extreme caution if we are to proceed with the formation of
CORE.

CORE will become a non-profit Swiss Association, this is well understood. 
It will, however, have a MONOPOLY over generic TLD space. This should be
well understood!

Keep in mind, as you read this article that both Bellcore and NSI are
recent SAIC acquisitions (Bellcore is not approved yet). This does not
bode well for any possibilities of the US Government extending NSI's
contract, especially if it were to be the entitiy to create the Shared
Database (instead of CORE creating it). There is no suggestion that this
will occur, but in this time of great uncertainty, no one knows what will
really happen. 

Keep in mind, as well, this article is from the perspective of the Small
Telco, and I believe that the issues raised here are similar to one's that
will be raised by the Small ISPs who are forced to deal with
CORE/CORE-registrars for SLDs in shared name space.

Beware.

Robert T. Nelson
President, INTERNOC(tm)
the internetwork operating company, inc.
+1.210.299.4662
rnelson@internoc.com

P.S. I have posted this profusely, pre-apologies for those of you who get
sick of it...where's that procmail message-id filter, J.D.? ;-> Please
trim Cc: where possible and appropriate on replies.


====== Reprinted with Permission from Author ==========================

This discussion is Beehive CEO's - monthly column as found on the last
page of Americas Network magazine. It has been printing his letters for
nearly 20 years. This column will remain posted till he writes the next
one. 

This column is an update on the Beehive/Bellcore disagreement thats been
boiling for the last three years.

The e-mail thanked me for a grandiose refund of overcharges by Bellcore.

You're welcome. 

Cash Cow
========
Bellcore and I have been squabbling over their rates and business promises
for years. To put an end to it, last year Bellcore came in and took all
10,000 of Beehive customer 800 numbers. Put us out of the 800 business.
Those numbers are now - by Federal Court Order - frozen for use by
anybody. Except for the 200 not disconnected at the moment the Federal
Court Judge ordered Bellcore to "stop" taking the numbers. 

I got mad. The question is, has all the dirt we've dug up cost the BOC
operating companies that cool $57.7 mil that they are now giving back from
admitted overcharges? And how much goes from the BOC to BOC? 

WHAT EQUITY?
============

I've said for years that the BOC have been getting cheaper rates for use
of the 800 signaling system than my little company pays. It goes like
this: The BOCs own Bellcore. Bellcore designed and operates the SMS 800
system. Everyone is forced to use it to route 800 calls to the network.
Folks like Beehive who had an operating 800 system could no longer depend
on our in house system(s) unless we paid tribute to Bellcore. And Bellcore
charged big bucks to store numbers in their computers and smaller bucks to
access the data. Profits returned to the owners of Bellcore were said to
be in the order of seven million dollars per month

If you own the monopoly store that makes profits such that even the owners
pay retail, the owners are, in fact, getting the service cheaper --
through profits -- than we non-owners. The former high school coach who
runs the SMS data base "team" says he does what the BOC Board of Directors
tells him to do: earn money.

But, Congress, in the 1996 Telecommunications Act, said that such a cozy
relationship as the SMS800 operation or number portability, cannot be
operated by an interested party

Yes! The BOC cash cow had to be got rid of.

So a buyer was found. The SMS800 team began to distance themselves from
the BOC's and Bellcore not only in anticipation of the sale, but also to
reduce the publicity of my court filings about the secretive ways they
operate, plus the huge profits being paid to their BOC owners. 

Before the deal could be consummated, the FCC said Bellcore had to return
those excess charges. At least one Bell complained that nobody said the
BOCs had to operate the system for free. Another said everyone booked the
costs of creating the SMS800 deal as an expense at the time, so how could
they justify any fees but operational costs? Interesting point. 

Bellcore said the FCC had to approve a waiver before Bellcore could return
the money. (Yet the coach told me "no way he could settle with Beehive,"
because "tariffs" prohibited change and a settlement would require FCC
approval! (A matter of scale, I suppose.)

In May, the FCC said Bellcore could give back some of the overcharges. In
a letter to all Resborgs from "the SMS management team", Bellcore styled
the return of $57.7 Million as a "variance". They also said the "team" was
"delighted... and pleased" to refund the overcharges. 

Sure they were.

Although the sale to SAIC is said to be a done deal, the lady is not to
sing until this fall. As of June 12, Bellcore said it is nothing more than
a "software" house and doesn't have anything to do with the SMS/800
management team operation. "A software house?" So who owns the team? More
than a few folk wonder if the sale includes fat license fees for the over
200,000 lines of C+ software and its continued use to operate the SMS800
system? 

Can software tippy toe in the tulips?
=====================================

Is there a connection that the same 800 programming/hardware methods be
used for local number portability (LNP)? As suggested in this column last
month in July 1, might it be better to adopt the Microsoft Internet
proposal as cheaper and more suited to the future? One regulatory engineer
opines that because now that the cow is out of the barn with BOC contracts
already let, there is nothing that can be done to change the path taken by
the BOCs in their "compliance" with FCC demands for LNP before the end of
the 3rd quarter. 

Our industry is firmly clutching antiquity as we madly go over the
precipice down to the future.

Copyright 1997 by A. W. Brothers and Americas Network magazine. All rights
reserved.

=========================================

Thanks again to Art Brothers for granting permission to reprint this on
the Internet.