Chapter 30: Re-Sale of Telecommunications Services
Overview
Telephone service sold by apartment houses, office complexes, and hotel/motels to their tenants, is known in the industry as Shared tenant services (STS). STS is a secondary service provided to customers, not the seller primary business. They are telephone service re-sellers having their own structure for re-billing telephone service. This is part of the reason why you pay more for a call from a hotel room than from a LEC owned payphone. There are other environments in which telephone service is commonly sold as a secondary service. They are Universities and Hospitals.
STS shared tenant service -
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Facility owns PBX/key system
·
Multi-tenant buildings or campus environments - may provide the
telephone sets
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Service seller does adds, moves and changes
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System can provide long-distance, repairs
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Local and long distance services can be provided at lower rates
than tenants can obtain on their own
·
Tenants can be attracted to a single point of contact for telecommunications
service
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Tenants are relieved of the administrative costs of keeping records;
handling adds, moves, and changes; purchasing services
·
Other services can be packaged with it like copying and printing,
facsimile, computer-aided graphics, and other such services
·
PBXs can be partitioned such that different tenants have their
own PBX functionality
·
Upscale properties have voice mail, a second line for fax and
many offer Internet service
·
Long-distance service provider chosen by the hotel (can calling
card access your own)
·
Accounting/billing system - the hotel is responsible for all
charges for calls from room telephones except operator-assisted and toll-free
calls
·
Properties can mark-up the service cost - beware
·
Property Management System (PMS) links the telephone system.
Enables a new guest telephone service immediately no billing confusion. Housekeeping
uses PMS by dialing a code when they have finished a room - keeps front desk
informed.
·
Similar to residential tenant properties
·
Each room occupant gets their own bill
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Staff use trunks during school hours and then the students use
them afterwards
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Most universities use an outside vendor for billing
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Vendors supply a storage device to collect long-distance details/bill
students directly
·
Institution applies a monthly service charge
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Each user gets Voice mail
·
Not in the re-sale business - most bills they deal with
are handled by insurance or Medicare
·
Very little demand for voice mail, fax or modem
·
Most permit long-distance billed to room (for a price)
·
DID allowed wherever possible to minimize staff fielding of calls
· Telecommunications Act of 1996 allowed developers to consider re-sellers of telephone service
· Developer can control the infrastructure, can buy services at favorable rates and re-sell them, or charge a fee to service providers to permit them access to the market you control.
· Developer can choose to offer DSL and/or cable for Internet access
· Developers can become an STS provider or provide infrastructure for service providers and share revenue with them.
·
Prone to fraud and vandalism
·
Need rugged construction due to the elements
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Problems and considerations as to where to place them and how
often the need to collect the coins
·
Many businesses purchased coin telephones but found they were
not profitable
·
Many have self-diagnostics that can be accessed by a terminal
with a special modem to talk with the telephones computer
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Call rating for long-distance
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Instruments have rating tables built-in the telephone
·
Charge is displayed or announced by voice synthesizer
·
Rating not found then call is restricted or connected to a centralized
rating system
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Credit card readers
·
Charges may range from $0.25 to $2.00 for services such as weather
and time
·
Call accounting reports the details
·
Credit Card Reader
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Amplification
·
Management packages software package available to coin-operator
for long-distance, billing, etc.
·
Real-time clock used in call rating to adjust charge for time
of day and day of week
·
Remote diagnostics
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Security alarms, hardened cases
·
Toll restrictions difficulty in rating long-distance and collecting
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Voice synthesizer
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Combination phone special phones to access e-mail, faxes, and
computers including a keyboard for text messaging
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Accurate call timing needed
·
LECs have coin-control circuitry in the central office where
answer supervision is present
·
Coins signal central office circuitry not available to privately
owned telephones
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How to register call completion:
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Timing the least accurate (number of seconds then coin is collected)
·
Voice energy detected on the line (do not collect for certain
recorded announcements or directory assistance
·
Time and call progress signals. (A combination of timing and
voice energy methods)