n076  1649  02 Oct 84
BC-BAKER-COLUMN
(Commentary)
OBSERVER: Wired for Slumber
By RUSSELL BAKER
c.1984 N.Y. Times News Service
    NEW YORK - I read not long ago that the judge who ordered the
destruction of the telephone company had no regrets. He even thought
he'd done society a favor. With the nature of changes in technology,
changes in corporate structure were necessary to healthy development,
and so forth, and so on - I couldn't make any sense of it either.
    It has something to do with the fact that we now have a business
called ''telecommunications,'' whatever that is, and anybody who
writes to tell me what it is goes high up on my enemies list.
    I am tired of being urged to spend precious time thinking about
things like ''telecommunications.'' I am especially tired of being
urged to think about telephones.
    Telephones can be useful, but as a subject to dwell upon they are
extremely boring, and please don't give me the line that spending
some time in intense thought about telephones can save the thinker a
little money.
    Spending your life thinking about tax laws can also save you a
little money, but is the money saved worth a lifetime of boredom?
    Plenty of people think it is, of course. For these wretched tax
bores a lively evening is an evening spent trading depreciation tips
and telling capital-gain jokes. When doctors tell them the tax law
has left their souls desiccated, they react with shock and sometimes
become insulting.
    Anybody who doesn't enjoy a life devoted to tax finagling, they say,
can only be sick, and a desiccated soul is a small price to pay for
the joy of the sport.
    Will we soon hear a generation of telephone bores making similarly
feeble excuses for their vice?
    When Washington tax geniuses began creating the monstrous tax system
we have today, they probably thought like Dr. Frankenstein and the
judge who wrecked the phone company. ''We're doing society a favor,''
they probably said.
    A favor? What kind of society is it in which you have to consult the
tax law before deciding whether to become a ballerina or a
real-estate speculator? A society of extremely boring people, that's
what kind of society it is.
    And now the telephone industry, not content with seeing a mighty
nation stupefied in a boredom induced by its tax law, insists that
everybody think about telephones. About the shape of telephones.
About the economics of making long-distance telephone calls. About
the relative merits of ''pulses,'' ''tones'' and rotary dials.
    Judge, you may have blessed America telecommunicationswise, but you
have also called down upon it a plague of telephone bores.
    Here, for example, is a recent mailing from a corporate shard left
in the wreckage of the phone company. It urges me to think gravely
about the economics of telephone wire.
    It seems the company is charging me a ''wire investment'' fee of
$1.21 every single month of the year plus a monthly ''wire
maintenance'' fee of 87 cents ''for each piece of company-provided
wire connected to telephones.''
    What constitutes a ''piece'' of wire? They don't say. The telephone
bill probably specifies this information somewhere, but the bill has
recently become so complicated that you need a doctorate in
telephone-bill interpretation to make any sense of it.
    The purpose of this mailing is to advise you how to reduce your
telephone-wire overhead by paying the company $32. Reading it with a
growing sense of disbelief, I note that by installing all the inside
telephone wire myself, I can escape the ''wire investment'' and
''wire maintenance'' charges in toto.
    Can you imagine installing your own telephone wire? And having it
work? Oh sure, sure it's easy. That's why the company suggests you
simply have its professionals first install either a Standard Network
Interface (SNI) or a Network Interface (NI), ''to separate the
company's wire entering your premises from the wire you provide
inside your home.''
    On the other hand - it drones on as I wonder in growing panic when I
will ever get time to think about beauty, peace and love - on the
other hand, suppose I want to avoid only the monthly ''wire
maintenance'' fee by asking the company for a Demarcation Point
Arrangement (DPA), which is a modular -
    This is even more boring than taxes, judge. Do a favor for beauty,
peace and love: Put it back together. Being bilked for ''wire
investment'' is a small price to pay for not having to learn the
difference between SNI and DPA.
    
nyt-10-02-84 1948edt
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