High expectations: Electric Lightwave accuses U S West of inadequate customer support

Electric Lightwave has filed a lawsuit against U S West charging the carrier with violating federal antitrust laws by failing to provide adequate interconnection services and facilities.

U S West's actions have led to disconnects, busy signals, blocked calls and other problems, the competitive carrier alleged. It is seeking an unspecified amount of damages that could run into the millions of dollars, said Susan McAdams, vice president of government affairs atElectric Lightwave.

"We really don't want to get involved in battles over regulatory or governmental issues, but U S West doesn't seem to grasp what competition means," McAdams said. "There is already some skepticism among consumers about the reliability of new competitors, and U S West seems to be doing everything it can to make that skepticism a permanent thing."

Customers of both U S West and Electric Lightwave have had difficulty completing calls to the other carrier's customers, McAdams said. U S West also has been slow to deploy requested resources, she said.

"It does appear that they may have some trouble in delivering new lines," said McAdams. "Our forecasting of traffic has been adequate, but we've been forced to offer DS-1 lines on a 90-day interval because we can't guarantee that the service will be in place before that."

U S West officials denied the charges, saying that any delays in provisioning were the fault of Electric Lightwave's "wildly optimistic estimates" of required lines.

"Electric Lightwave and the other competitors have put in orders for us to add network resources at our own expense, with no guarantee that they will have the customers to use those resources," a U S West spokesman said. "They're asking us to replicate the network we have in place several times over."

Electric Lightwave is also building up customers' expectations of service, the spokesman charged. "Installing these resources isn't like turning on a light switch," he said. Although the spokesman admitted that some calls between the carriers' customers were dropped, he attributed the service interruption to Internet usage.

Partnerships between the companies for interconnection and network planning continue "at the nuts and bolts level," and the lawsuit from Electric Lightwave's corporate offices is a ploy to elicit potential customers' sympathy, he said.

This is the first antitrust suit filed against a Bell company in connection with the 1996 Telecommunications Act requirement that incumbent local carriers cooperate with competing carriers to provide nondiscriminatory local service.

A new billing solution introduced by Systems/Link last week promises wireless carriers a simple, low-cost method of providing customers with a prepaid service option.

System/Link's Home & Away prepaid software requires no additional switching equipment and provides real-time home and roaming account debits. The system is an extension of the company'sRoamEx real-time roamer data exchange offering.

"We're taking it one step further and providing an adjunct product that will allow [carriers] to supply prepaid calling cards to their end users," said Diane Sammer, president and chief executive officer of Systems/Link.

Records for customers activated on the Home & Away system are flagged on a carrier's customer care system and do not become part of the regular billing system, Sammer said.

The software is designed for any size cellular or personal communication services operator, but its low cost of entry is likely to make it the most appealing to smaller carriers, Sammer said. Cellular One of Puerto Rico is using Home & Away software to facilitate billing for its prepaid customers.