Voice
Communication in Business Volume 1
Essays on telecommunications,
1969-1980
PART III
Proposals and Implementation
Introduction
Before and for several
years after Carterfone, obtaining a telephone system was simplicity
itself. You just went to the telephone company and took whatever
they wanted you to have. This saved time, but didn't always lead to
the best results. The very lack of choice kept you from knowing what
you were missing, however, so things didn't seem too bad.
With the coming of
interconnect, the opportunity to choose among many different brand
names appeared to give the business customer a whole new shot at
communications. But even the most ardent admirer of Milton Friedman
must wonder at the value of "freedom to choose" among five or more
systems that do many things you are not interested in, and do not do
what is actually required.
Obtaining a PBX today is
very much like obtaining a computer, a milling machine, or any other
piece of industrial equipment. You put out a specification asking
for proposals, evaluate the proposals when they come in, and then
choose the best system at the lowest cost. Or that, at least, is the
theory. The actual adventure illustrates one of the more poignant of
the Goeller laws of economics: you never get to choose the most best
... only the least worst.
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