What’s on the Line
Bellcore, the research laboratory in Livingston, N.J., owned jointly by the Baby Bell phone companies, is experimenting with the “next generation” of voice mail services.
The services being tested by 60 residential and business customers enable users to answer calls to their home from anywhere while the caller is still on the line, have their telephones ring at more than one location and let through only selected callers while directing others to leave a message.
“We’re learning how potential new services might be constructed and operated in future telephone networks and whether customers will be able to use these services easily and effectively,” said project manager Maurice Lampell.
Pacific Bell is just starting its effort to sign up residential customers and small businesses for new telephone answering and messaging services. And California’s second-largest local phone company, Thousand Oaks-based GTE California, has postponed “indefinitely” its commercial tests, according to spokesman Larry Cox.
But out in the hinterlands, Contel of California has offered voice mail services for more than a year, though with modest results--about 2% penetration in four markets: its headquarters city of Victorville and the resort areas of Big Bear, Mammoth Lakes and Stateline, Nev.
Contel offers two levels of service: Basic answering service at $4.95 a month provides capacity to record 58 five-minute messages in a month; enhanced service, at a monthly flat rate of $19.95, receives and sends messages, automatically “stamping” each with the date and time, and enables customers to route a single message to up to 10 local numbers. (With special arrangements, Contel can compile message lists of up to 150 parties.)
Pacific Bell is using Octel Communications’ voice-messaging equipment, produced in Milpitas; Contel employs four machines from VMX Inc. in Dallas.
The entry of the so-called Baby Bells phone companies into the budding voice mail market became possible only in March, 1988.
A federal court in Washington ruled that the local phone companies could use their networks to carry voice mail and other electronic information services as long as they met two conditions: They could not produce the information services themselves and they had to treat all suppliers of information services equally.
The court and the Federal Communications Commission required the companies to modify their phone systems to assure that all outside vendors offering services requiring use of the local networks pay the same prices for equal levels of service.
