Incumbents’ service quality on wholesale side has gotten so bad t...

service. WorldCom Public Policy Vp Chip Casteel said deteriorating service quality on wholesale side was being overlooked amid clamor on retail side. For crucial DS-1 and DS-3 dedicated circuits CLECs need to service their retail accounts, he said, installation intervals industrywide are getting longer and predictability of delivery much worse. He said that in last year, DS-1/DS-3 installation intervals had increased 1/3, with promised delivery dates missed on roughly half of all installations. American ISP Assn. Exec. Dir. Sue Ashdown said difficulties in dealing with incumbent telcos to obtain digital subscriber lines (DSL) and dedicated circuits were sapping ISPs’ strength. She said incumbent telcos were using poor service as strategic tool, employing “strategic incompetence” to put off competitors. PrimeCo Wireless Technical Dir. Richard Kane said wireless carriers depended on incumbent telco dedicated circuits to link their cellular towers with mobile switching offices, and generally had no alternative source, but in recent years had experienced installation delays, unreliable service and billing problems. He said 80% of wireless network failures could be traced to failure of incumbent-provided terrestrial line. Incumbents’ service quality problems “impair our ability to compete,” he said. “Wireless competition is intense, but it’s only just developing on the landline side.” He said wireless companies needed minimum quality standards for incumbents that were strictly enforced. But SBC Performance Monitoring Vp Michael Gilliam said his company alone must keep track of 100 million distinct wholesale service performance measurements monthly, reported on 25,000 pages, to ensure quality is maintained. “Quality of service is the number one item on our list,” he said. BellSouth Vp-Transport Services Hal Henderson said his company “has never been more quality focused.” He said BellSouth just began new quality incentive program called “The Customer Rules,” focused on keeping up with increasingly complex quality demands, along with hiring more technicians and employing new network service technologies to increase employee efficiency. “Quality failure isn’t an option anymore,” he said.