e had been given a promotion, a higher salary and moved to Nynex! I have no idea if they ever sold the account. Customer relations. Computer companies want to please their customers. Telephone companies want to keep their cus- tomers from complaining. The BIG thing that gets a telephone executive's attention is a complaint letter to the local PSC, or a complaint letter to the president of the telephone com- pany. Computer companies want the excitement of new sales. Telephone companies want the peace of non-complaining cus- tomers who unquestioningly pay their monthly phone bills. Education. Go to any bookstore. You'll find acres of books on computers. Try to find the books on telephones. This is not accidental. The telephone industry figured long ago that if it could keep its customers in the dark with a "Trust me, Trust me," philosophy, they could sell them and charge whatever they wanted. You don't believe me? Find your company's last month's phone bill. Ask yourself what all the line items mean? Ask yourself, "Are you really using what you're pay- ing for?" Now, call your local phone company's business office and ask them to explain what's on the bill. Good luck. The Telecom Handbook xxi THE TELECOM HANDBOOK It's not because telephone services are complex. Computers are much more complex. It's because the telephone industry deliberately chooses to obfuscate how it bills for its products and services. Common Mistakes That's enough of the differences. Let's list a few of the more common mistakes computer companies make when dealing with phone companies: Motivation. "If I do this," the computer company says, "your phone company will get $X thousand more per month. So let's do this joint deal together." Says the phone company, "Seems like a good idea to me. Let me study it." Translation: "When we've studied it to death in our various million com- mittees, we might do a field trial. But the trial will be set up in such a way that it will fail. And then I won't ever have to make a decision to go ahead or not go ahea