Here comes the tricky part, Bell Atlantic and Nynex gear up for back office collaboration

The decision that cleared the way for the Bell Atlantic/Nynex merger may have also provided an opportunity for the newly paired Bell regional holding companies to serve as a model for interconnection for the rest of the telecom industry.

Engineers and executives from the two companies began meetings today to hash out the details of interconnecting back office systems, according to a spokeswoman for Bell Atlantic. The companies will also discuss methods for allowing competitors to access customer records, one of a number of provisions required by the Federal Communications Commission.

"We'll be entering into an exercise for developing new procedures to accommodate a new environment," said Steve Araps, manager of strategic planning for network operations at Bell Atlantic. "We're hoping to develop a system based on customized routing, using an Advanced Intelligent Network-based adjunct architecture to provide competitive local exchange carriers with a robust capability for switching new customers.

To provide this ability, the carriers must first agree on a method of exchanging information within the unified environment.

"We use the ECG interface for electronic bonding, and we expect that to be what is brought to bear on this issue," Araps said. "This is the interface that most customers and interexchange carriers use to get information, and we can use the same interface for other functions such as pre-ordering services and provisioning.

The companies will also use electronic data interface to exchange data for ordering, Araps said.

Nynex officials declined to discuss any possible approaches to interconnection before technical discussions with Bell Atlantic.

With the merger now dependent on implementing interconnection between the two systems and the rest of the carrier world, the two could set the stage for the rest of the industry, analysts said.

"The merger is going to be an opportunity for the industry to see if the standards that have evolved for interconnection work in the real world," said Tom Nolle, president of CIMI Corp. "There really isn't a good test bed in place to study how well the interfaces approved by the ATM Forum and the Frame Relay Forum work.

Despite pent-up demand for a proven interconnection solution, Araps warned that the culture and composition of large carriers makes any change difficult.