Internet Calls Strain Telephone Systems Skyrocketing Usage Blamed For Busy Signals In Some Regions

Internet usage in the Silicon Valley and other computer-rife regions is clogging phone lines so much that thousands of local calls are not going through, phone companies say.

“All of a sudden we’re being hit by a huge growth of traffic - more users calling longer and longer,” said Ralph Parker, a market manager for Pacific Bell, a West Coast local phone service provider.

Normally, 1 percent of local calls receive a fast busy signal or delay in dial tone, Parker said.

But, at one point this year, Pacific Bell found that 16 percent of local calls in a 24-mile diameter area in the Silicon Valley didn’t go through, mainly because of two Internet service providers that Parker declined to identify.

East Coast regional phone companies, including Nynex and Bell Atlantic, also have complained about the strain the Internet is placing on lines that once carried mostly voice phone calls.

Industry watchdogs agree it’s a growing problem.

“We’re definitely seeing the worst of it in California because we’re such ‘techies’ … But it’s totally an issue of economics. It’s not (a lack of) technology,” said Jo An Couche, a telecommunications analyst with DataQuest in San Jose in the Silicon Valley.

In other words, Pacific Bell and other companies know how to fix the problem, they just don’t want to pay for it - but neither do Internet providers, analysts say.

Long-distance providers, such as AT&T, MCI and Sprint, must pay phone companies for access to local phone lines. But, since Internet service providers and other non-voice services arrived on the scene in the early 1980s, the Federal Communications Commission has exempted them from such charges.

But usage is skyrocketing.

For example, while voice calls average about four minutes on Pacific Bell lines, local calls made to hook up to the Internet average 22 minutes with 10 percent of all calls running more than an hour.

Parker also points to reports that industry giant America Online, which provides Internet access among other services, expects to have 7 million customers by the end of the year.

Meanwhile, Pacific Bell said beefing up its system to handle longer and more frequent calls will cost $25 million to $100 million in 1997.

But Sirius Connections, one of about 200 Internet service providers in the San Francisco Bay area, said phone companies could have solved the problem a long time ago by bypassing expensive switches and dedicating some lines for Internet use.

Couche, the analyst, thinks Internet providers - not used to dealing with regulation - seem to be hoping the problem will go away.

“The Internet service providers are being somewhat naive about this,” she said.

Still, FCC Chairman Reed Hundt is no fan of access charges for Internet providers and is, instead, calling for the system to be revamped.

“You don’t pour new wine in old bottles and if we applied these old access rules to new technologies, you’d have every reason to whine,” Hundt said in a speech in Washington last month. “Instead, let’s just break the old bottle - in fact, the bottleneck - of exchange access.”