Re: Fiber Cut Knocks S.E. Kansas Off Line

Our esteemed editor wrote in V25 I64,

Regards 620-402 and 620-331, the latter is the telephone exchange for > _everything_ in Independence except municipal government which is 332 > and cell phones which are either 330, 331, or 332. An exception is the > very odd exchange 620-714 which is listed as Independence but there is > no one on it except for the TerraWorld dialups. But the guy who owns > TerraWorld also owns Prairie Stream, our local CLEC. He said to me > that '714 was assigned to him when he started Prairie Stream' and that > 'in theory' if he took on new customers who did _not already_ have > phone service from SW Bell he would put his 'new' customers in > 620-714. But, he 'uses SBC to do his credit checking for him'; in > other words, you have to have working service from Bell before he will > give you his phone service, therefore his customers already have > phones with 331 or 325 (Neodesha) or 289 (Tyro/Caney KS rural) or 251 > (Coffeyville) so if SBC has not cut you off, he assumes you are a good > credit risk and takes you on with Prairie Stream if you wish to > switch, and he just ports your existing 331 (325,289,251) number as he > did with me when I started using Duane's company. In any event, > TerraWorld's dialup in Independence is 714-0005. I think Coffeyville > is -0008 and Neodesha is -0002. 620-714 is 'local' to all of us.

This is a very "interesting" industry, where rules, and companies who try to play by them, are often in flux. I was wondering about those numbers, so I looked them up. Prairie Stream is an Unbundled Network Element Platform CLEC, with no switch of its own. So it uses SW Bell numbers as well as the rest of the SW Bell network. UNE-P is basically a form of resale, though the financials are different from what is formally called "resale".

A CLEC can have its own prefix codes. It normally does not get ILEC numbers for its own customers, except by porting them over (as Prairie Stream does). It can however usually get fresh ILEC numbers for new UNE-P installs. If it had its own switch, though, it would need its own number blocks, in order to assign fresh numbers to new subscribers who weren't porting numbers over. That's what the 620-714 prefix is. However, it's not Prairie Stream's. They don't have a switch.

620-714 belongs to "KMC Telecom III". It is an Independence prefix served by a "switch" in Wichita. I am not sure but I think the "switch" is a Cisco AS5800 gateway/RAS (modem pool) which, with a Signaling System 7 gateway and some software, passes for a decent little phone switch. So TerraWorld's dialups are probably on that system.

It gets more interesting in figuring out who owns what. "KMC Telecom" was a fairly large CLEC operation, structured as a group of numbered subsidiaries. It owned tons of switches and metro fiber optics around the country. It was not, however, a financial success. So last year it sold off most of its assets. Some, mostly in the southeast, went to Telcove, the company set up to acquire the assets of Adelphia Business Solutions f/k/a Hyperion. Others, mostly in the midwest, went to CenturyTel, the Louisiana rural ILEC chain that owns a few CLEC assets in Bell areas. "KMC Telecom III LLC" went to CenturyTel. The deal included the switches, the fiber, and even the use of the name "KMC Telecom III LLC".

If, as it appears, TerraWorld's Independence phone numbers are answered by modems in Wichita (the sane answer, from an engineering perspective), then CenturyTel (in its KMC III guise) is now in the curious position of providing a "Virtual NXX" service. This goes against their grain rather flagrantly. CenturyTel vigorously opposes any kind of "VNXX" or even foreign exchange services used by ISPs in their ILEC territories. They even oppose (this is before the FCC now) allowing "local" calls to radio pagers or cell phones whose switching systems are not in the Centurytel-defined local calling areas. For TerraWorld's modems to meet CenturyTel's standards, they'd have to backhaul the phone calls to a modem bank in Independence. That would be rather costly. Or they'd have to install a Media Gateway (essentially, a switch node) in Independence, so the calls don't go through Wichita.

Regards 620-402, that prefix is in Winfield, KS, a tiny little place > about 50 miles west of here. It is also the Vonage POP for this part > of S.E. Kansas. I have Vonage service here in my home (620-402-0134) > as well as my Prairie Stream [nee, SBC] service on 620-331. But I do > not have five cents worth of SBC service, a company which is starting > to fall out of favor with many folks in Independence since Duane, with > his good reputation for ISP service started Prairie Stream Communications > as well, and now he is licensed to do business anywhere in Kansas > which is otherwise SBC or Sprint/United territory. The Kansas > Commission _loves_ him; they _hate_ SBC/Sprint/United. PAT]

620-402 is a prefix belonging to Telcove, as successor to Adelphia Business Solutions, who originally got it. It too has a switch in Wichita.

Fred Goldstein k1io fgoldstein "at" ionary.com ionary Consulting

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[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Do you think that Adelphia, KMC, Century, or Telecove have anything going on out of St. Louis as well (or possibly in the St. Louis suburb of Ballwin? That might explain the comment to me from Duane with the unanswered response to Herb Stein's question elsewhere in this issue when Herb asked me 'who are his associates in St. Louis?' Fred, I can tell you this much about KMC and Wichita: six or eight months ago KMC (on paper at least) sold all its Wichita customers to Duane and Prairie Stream. Both newspapers (Wichita Beacon-Eagle I think) and our own Independence Reporter mentioned it; that Prairie Stream was getting about four thousand new customers as a result. PAT]