Why I don't like telephones

Here I tell of my effort to get online by telephone. After reading this it will be quite clear why I walk around with an antenna sticking out of a baseball cap, or a device with a "rubber duckie" antenna clipped to my belt. Besides, now I am online wherever I am, whether at home, or standing in line at the bank or grocery store.

What follows is a letter I sent to Scott Adams when I heard that he was fired by Pacific Hell (I mean Bell).

Adams said Tuesday he and Pacific Bell parted company June 30.

``They asked me to leave, and I did,'' he said simply.

Pacific Bell officials did not return a call seeking comment.

From: Steve Mann 
Date: Wed, 9 Aug 1995 18:31:16 -0400
To: scottadams@aol.com
Cc: steve@media.mit.edu, fredm@media.mit.edu, big-phun@media.mit.edu
Subject: Pacific Hell
Reply-To: steve@media.mit.edu

As you've just been liberated from Pacific Hell, I feel I must share with you my own experience with Pac Hell.

I spent the summer of 1993 working at HP labs in Palo Alto, and it was a very enjoyable experience in almost every regard -- I had a great relationship with my fellow workers, the weather was spectacular, etc..., but getting a telephone installed in my apartment was hell, to say the least.

I called up Pacific Bell from work, asking for phone service for home (my apartment), and they told me that they needed a social security number, or I'd have to visit their office in person, and bring a picture ID, such as a driver's license, or state-issued ID card.

After identifying myself to their satisfaction, they agreed to provide service, and said I was "connected", but I noticed that evening that there was still no dial tone.

After calling them numerous times, they insisted that my phone was working, yet I had no dial tone. I scheduled several visits during which Pac Bell repair technicians would either not appear, or appear late (after I had already left). When they were late, and came after I already left, they would leave a tag on the door of my apartment indicating they had visited. The tags had spaces for DATE, TIME, and NAME of repair technician. Ironically only the DATE field was filled in, while the TIME and NAME fields were left blank. I thought this was kind of strange for a company that was so obsessed with positive ID. I told my story to one of the phone technicians at work (HP) and he said that he used to work at Pac Bell and that employees would often write in false names or false employee numbers in order to shirk responsibility. Gradually, over the next month or so (I was only there for the summer so by then I was getting ready to forget having a phone in my apartment), I climbed up through the ranks of Pac Bell, talking with people higher and higher up. By this time, I had been trying to keep a log of time, date, and who I was talking to each time I called them from work. However, most of the time, Pac Bell employees refused to give me their names over the phone, so finally, I said that I wanted to talk to someone who was willing to identify himself/herself. This is the only way I could climb up the ranks -- by insisting that each person I talk to identify himself/herself, for this was what led me to "real people" -- people who actually had names.

Eventually, I got an understanding of the problem -- Pac Bell indicated that the wire from the terminal room (in the apartment complex) to my apartment was the responsibility of my apartment manager, and that I should talk to [her]. She of course, said that the wiring was the responsibility of Pacific Bell. I asked Pacific Bell if they could admit me to the terminal room and present me with a dial tone -- assuming the wiring was not their responsibility, I figured that it was their responsibility to give me a dial tone somewhere, and then leave me with the task of wiring this myself or of asking my apartment manager to replace or repair the wiring.

They insisted that I could not have access to the terminal room and that I should ask my apartment manager for access. They said that they had placed a standard RJ11 jack in the terminal room, with a tag, upon which they had written my name. So they claimed to have fulfilled their obligation to provide me with a dial tone, but when I asked my apartment manager for access to this jack, she said that the terminal room was property of Pac Bell, and could not grant me access to this room.

I did, indeed have a "live" phone jack provided to me by Pac Bell, but it was inside a room that they claimed only my apartment manager could provide me access to, and which my apartment manager claimed only Pac Bell could provide me access to.

Various technicians at Pac Bell told me that there must be something wrong with the wiring from the terminal room to my apartment, and that it was not their responsibility. I asked them if they would be willing to connect my phone to the yellow/black wires instead of the red/green wires, as is usually done, but they said that would cost me $45 plus some hourly rate, and by that time, since I was only going to be there for the remainder of the summer, I was beginning to lose interest in telephony, especially since the weather was so nice outside, and there were better things to do than talk into a round thing with 37 holes in it.

However, I thought that if I was going to pay my phone bill, I should at least experience the joy of hearing a "dial tone", so I made this argument to Pacific Bell, and convinced them to once again send out a truckload of equipment, this time, on a Saturday so that I could be home all day, so that *when* they arrived *late*, I'd still be there. After a couple of tries (e.g. they didn't show on the first Saturday), I finally met a Pac Bell technician face-to-face, and I told him my story, and he went to the terminal room (with me following him). I was about to walk in and ask him where my RJ11 phone jack was that Pac Bell had said they had tested and was "working", but the technician yelled at me "go to your apartment and pick up your phone" (it appeared that he didn't want me to see my phone jack).

Of course my phone didn't work because there was a short in the red and green wires, and the technician refused to connect the yellow and black wires, but he also forgot to lock the door to the terminal room, so that night I found the RJ11 phone jack with my name on it, but there were hundreds of wires and I had no idea which one led back to my apartment.

So I tested for a dialtone on every pair of terminals, quickly brushing the terminals down row by row, making a note of those without dial tones, and then checked continuity on the non-connected wires, etc., went back to my apartment, shorted the yellow and black, and found the pair that had changed state (from open to short), after which I finally connected to yellow/black and had phone service.

The terminal room was a beautiful conjestion of wires, nicely draped in layers and layers of cobwebs and dust. There was clutter, such as a dead mouse, and other debris among this texture, along with hundreds of cigarette butts, barely visible because of the thick coating of dust. Before leaving the terminal room, I took a picture there which later won a prize in the Wiesner art competetion.

Among the "rat's nest" (indeed it appeared to be a place where rats actually did nest), what caught my attention was a single set of wires leading off from the "nest", upon which there was a small tag, bearing the words "Special Service Line. For information, call ______________"

The blank line (where a number should have been written) concluded a summer that had begun with "TIME ___________" and "NAME ___________" tags upon my door, and suddenly I realized that the problem with telephony is its lack of competition. While there are competing long-distance providers, there's only one company who provides service right into the home -- The Phone Company (TPC).

This story is too long and detailed for the average reader, I am sure, but I believe that you could write a short comic strip that would summarize it quite nicely.

--steve