Hello,

I search centrex-users, which can send me a report about experiences with
centrex.
I publish a (private) journal for free about centrex in german (please,
excuse my bad english).

Andreas Schulz

Andamus Consult
P.O. box 46 01 03, D-01246 Dresden, Germany
Berthold-Haupt-Straße 93, D-01259 Dresden, Germany
Telefon: +49 351  2 07 07 70
Telefax: +49 351  2 07 07 79
EMail: i...@centrex-online.com,
www.centrex-online.com (only in german)

We have a few thousand Centrex lines, and have had them for 22 years.
But soon this is going to change, and we will be going to a VoIP with
DIDs and all the fancy schmancy stuff that the big dogs have.

When I read this, I was quite puzzled as to how a German public
would benefit from US subscriber experiences. After a little
digging around on Andreas' web site, I have concluded the following
(Andreas, please correct me if I am wrong):

Although the German telephone system consists of modern computer-
controlled digital switching systems (after all, ISDN was mostly
designed and widely deployed in Germany) which would easily be
capable of providing CENTREX services, such services have not
been marketed very much. Andreas' consulting company is lobbying
on behalf of German business customers to get Telekom Deutschland
to offer more CENTREX services. Since there is a lot of deployment
experience in North America, he is looking for us to tell him
stories about both good and bad experiences with CENTREX services.

  ---

In general, CENTREX services are usually attractive in situations
where tariff quirks allow certain services to be priced lower as
part of a CENTREX package. As there is more competition in the
local exchange market, such quirks are mostly going away.

CENTREX was created at a time when the telephone company was not
allowed to sell PBXes. As soon as they found the loophole (create
an unregulated subsidiary that does all the things that the regu-
lated main company is not allowed to do) their interest cooled a
bit.

Nowadays, CENTREX is mostly useful in specific situations:
- large institutional organizations with complex internal
  bureaucracies. Such organizations have to provide internal
  billing to user departments for all services. Often it is
  cheaper to let the telephone company own the switch and do
  the billing. I have seen universities where the CENTREX
  service is provisioned out of a switch on campus. So it
  is really an outsourcing deal.
- companies with multiple locations, where a CENTREX can allow
  free calls between stations at all the sites that are
  physically in the same rate center. If each site had a PBX,
  calls between buildings would be charged as metered local
  calls.

On the other hand, with CENTREX you get to pay for a line
for each station, rather than only paying for the trunks
to carry the outside calls. But this is offset by not having
to pay for a switch.

Andreas, I think you will have to ask specific questions.
Those of us who know it and use it are so used to what it
can and cannot do, that we don't know what your questions
would be.

In my last job, I had a business with 10 voice lines and
16 ISDN-BRI lines. I wanted them all in a Centrex group,
because I was testing ISDN CPE (Internet access routers)
and did not want to buy an ISDN-capable PBX. At the time
we were moving in, the telephone company told me they were
short on pairs to the building and tey would not install
anything until they had pairs for everything. Well, we needed
to move in, so I split the order: Cancelled the ISDN lines,
then as soon as I had a confirmed install date for the voice
liens, ordered the ISDN lines as an add-on. Immediately
discovered catch-22: They refused to add ISDN to the centrex.
They had two separate switches in the rate center, and
one of them was only used for ISDN, and the other (which was
not ISDN capable) was used for customers with no ISDN. When
I cancelled the ISDN, they had allocated the voice lines to
the switch that was not ISDN capable. And they did not have
the software to allow a centrex group to be split between
two switches. Well, I really only needed the ISDN lines to
be in centrex; while it seemed reasonable to have ONE large
centrex group, two made no sense. In fact, having a centrex
group behind the PBX complicated the dialing patterns on the
PBX. So I asked to remove the centrex overlay from the voice
liens, but the phone company said no. They had waived the
tarriffed setup charge for the centrex against a 12-month
commitment to centrex, so if I cancelled centrex, they would
bill me for the install charges and then charge me another
install fee for plain telephone lines. And they would give me
new telephone numbers, since the number they had given me was
in a prefix that was only used for centrex. Well by then we
had already printed business cards, so it was too late to
change the numbers. So I asked them to take all the centrex
FEATURES off my group, especially the need to "dial 9 for an
outside call". At first they insisted it could not be done,
but eventually I found that they were wrong: There was a
feature described as "always assume a 9 is dialed when
the station goes off-hook to originate a call". Unfortunately,
this was an expensive feature, with a monthly charge equal to
the basic charge per line, so I did not order it.

Andreas, am I right, this is the kind of user experiences you
are interested in?
--
/ Lars Poulsen    -    http://www.cmc.com/lars     -  l...@cmc.com
  125 South Ontare Road, Santa Barbara, CA 93105 - +1-805-569-5277

I didn't think there was any such restriction in 1963, when I first
saw Centrex.

[snip]

Um, looks like you're in Pac Hell territory, too.  So are we.

No, we are in GTE land (now Verizon). We always WISHED we were
under Pac Bell, who actually promoted ISDN.
--
/ Lars Poulsen    -    http://www.cmc.com/lars     -  l...@cmc.com
  125 South Ontare Road, Santa Barbara, CA 93105 - +1-805-569-5277

Check this out:

http://www.patheticbell.com

Hello Lars,

many thanks for your very apt abstract of my centrex forum. Until now, I
can not describe my mission in english. Now I have a template :-).

That also go for Russia. But in german, only the national telephone
company sell PBXes. Since 1990 many companys offer ISDN-PBXes. And so,
the CENTREX services found no market.

I think, small and flexible enterprises need CENTREX. Specially with
several registered offices.

Modern access technologies can reduce the cost of lines.

Yes.

Your example (see below) was a very interesting beginning. Some questions
about centrex in the USA:
Can you get a centrex group from several companys?
How is your experience with CTI services? !!!
How much must you pay for centrex lines? (Especially ISDN)
How long must you wait for install a centrex line?
Do you know, how many companys use centrex? (or how many lines in USA)
Where can I find a survey of companys, which offer centrex?
And many more questions.

I am horrified about your experiences? But in germany I heard similar
experiences in telecommunication. The words serve and service >unknown.
May I publish your short story in the next journal?

Regards

Andreas

Andamus Consult
Andreas Schulz
PO Box 46 01 03, D-01246 Dresden
Berthold-Haupt-Straße 93, D-01259 Dresden
Phone: +49 351 2 07 07 70
Fax: +49 351 2 07 07 79
EMail: i...@andamus.com
URL: www.andamus.com

1) Each centrex group will be from a single company; I cannot
   imagine that several local exchange carriers will want to
   co-operate to create such a beast! [Yes, I know that is not
   what you meant ...]
2) In principle, any local exchange carrier (LEC) should be able
   to offer them. In practice, the competitive LECs would be able
   to create flexible plans without having to call it centrex.
   I am sure many readers on telecom-tech have better answers to
   this than I do.

3) CTI = Computer-Telephony Integration? I have none.
   Looking at CTI from the outside, it seems that the ideal
   solution for smaller offices would be a fairly simple ISDN
   terminal adapter that would allow you to plug in a standard
   high-end phone while providing the calling number (on an
   async serial port or an ethernet packet) to a nearby computer
   for a database lookup. For larger call centers, the whole
   ACD (Automatic Call Distributer) switch will be designed
   around the integrated function. I have never worked in this
   field.

4) Typically, you pay for each line, as if it were a standalone
   line.

5) Typically, as if you had ordered the same amount of standalone
   lines, plus about 2 weeks for review and setup of the centrex
   features.

6) Dun and Bradstreet would sell you the information, but I can
   make a wild guess. Maybe 5% of all lines (10% of all business
   lines).

7) Any list of incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs).

As the old song goes "It's the same, the whole world over,
ain't it all a bleeding shame!".

Since I can't stop you, I'll happily give you permission.
May I have a copy?
--
/ Lars Poulsen    -    http://www.cmc.com/lars     -  l...@cmc.com
  125 South Ontare Road, Santa Barbara, CA 93105 - +1-805-569-5277

We pay about $15.50 a month for one without features like call
forwarding to our Vmail system.  With features, it's about $17.50 a
month.

That's about what it takes for us.  But at our main campus, we have a
LightSpan SLIC that Pac Bell owns, so they can provision a line in a few
days, because the whole thing is done in software.  But if we need a
line at one of our remote campuses, the time may be a minimum of two
weeks becasue the line has to go thru more than one central office, and
that has to be 'engineered'.  And it also costs another $27 to $33 in
addition to the monthly charge.