tepped off. I think it's getting worse. To "fire" those 250,000 people, they offered many of them retirement and departure finan- cial incentives that you'd have to be just plain stupid not to accept. You could argue, as a result, that the average IQ of the country's telephone company executives has dropped. You wouldn't be wrong. It's sad. Is Any of This Going to Change? The good news is that it will. It won't change because com- panies like Nynex change. They won't. They'll still be glacial, visionless, unmotivated and difficult to deal with. But they'll get competition. Technology is the great change merchant. It always has been in telecommunications. And it always will be. Technol- ogy brought MCI, Sprint and hundreds of others into long distance. That industry improved. Ditto for telephone equipment The Telecom Handbook xxiii THE TELECOM HANDBOOK you put in your office. Ditto for fax machines, etc. Technology will bring competition to the local business. You'll buy local ser- vice from MCI, and dozens of others. They'll want your business and they'll do reasonable and wonderful things to get it. They'll cooperate with you in your computer telephony projects. They'll set up intelligent developer programs. They'll let you experiment. They'll let you put your equipment in their offices. They'll even take care of your equipment. Some of this might rub off onto some of the nation's phone companies. Bell Atlantic and BellSouth are acting more progressive. There is hope, yet. Just don't pin your business plan on it. Harry Newton New York City, June, 1994 xxiv of The Telecom Handbook PART I Telecommunications Systems The Telecom Handbook - 1 Taylor & Francis Taylor & Francis Group http://taylorandfrancis.com CHAPTER 1. The Telephone Newton's Telecom Dictionary defines the telephone as a truly remarkable invention that does the following things: When you lift the receiver, it signals the local system that you wish to use the worldwide phone system. It indicates that the phone system is ready for you to dial by giving