TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Re: Bell Divestiture

Re: Bell Divestiture

AES (siegman@stanford.edu)
Mon, 20 Jun 2005 08:52:38 -0700

One thing the pre-divestiture Bell System did well was to

1) Set specific, quantitative numerical standards for quality and
reliability of service, and publish them internally.

[E.g., how many service outages per year a residential customer could
expect to experience and for how long; the average number of rings a
customer would have to wait before a service or inquiry call was
answered; and so on.]

[I was once told that the standard for service outages, for example,
said that no residential customer should be without dial tone for more
than 18 minutes/year for any reasons under Bell System control
(including for example line losses due to failure to trim tree limbs
regularly).]

2) Then actually **measure**, record, and monitor their own performance
(i.e., the performance of individual LBOCs) to these standards.

3) And finally, actually respond when their performance was below
standard.

I once asked a Bell Labs old-timer, "So, did the career advancement of
a local Bell company manager actually depend in any way on their
performance against these standards?" Answer was, "You bet it
did!!!".

Interesting to ask your current electrical power provider, for
example, what their **published, quantitative standards** for power
service outages are?

Or ask your airline frequent flyer plan when you call in seeking award
seats what their published, quantitative standards are for providing
you an award seat on the day you want to go.

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