Received: by bu-cs.BU.EDU (5.58/4.7) id AA15904; Wed, 18 Jan 89 03:50:29 EST Message-Id: <8901180850.AA15904@bu-cs.BU.EDU> Date: Wed, 18 Jan 89 3:28:35 EST From: The Moderator Reply-To: TELECOM@bu-cs.BU.EDU Subject: TELECOM Digest V9 #19 To: TELECOM@bu-cs.bu.edu TELECOM Digest Wed, 18 Jan 89 3:28:35 EST Volume 9 : Issue 19 Today's Topics: Life as a toll station Bad pay-phone experiences while travelling Phone Rates Panasonic Switching System AT&T 1300 Answering system Re: Will my Sony IT-a600 work in Oz? Re: New way to donate money [Moderator's Note: This is *part two* of the Digest for 1-18. P.Townson] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 17 Jan 89 12:54:54 PST From: laura_halliday@mtsg.ubc.ca To: telecom@bu-cs.bu.edu Subject: Life as a toll station Back when I was in elementary school, my mum and dad decided they wanted to live out in the country, so we moved to a place about 50km west of Quesnel, B.C. At first we had no phone, then we had a radio phone because dad was the local manager for BCTel. Then we became a toll station... We remained Baker Creek 1-C for a couple of years. Everybody (10 parties? 12 parties?) was on the same line, and BCTel used coded ringing to identify subscribers. Our code was two long rings and two short rings. To place an outgoing call, you picked up the phone and it rang at the operator's console in Prince George (140km away). You told the operator who you wanted to call, and she connected you. Incoming calls had to go through the operator as well; you told the operator you wanted Baker Creek 1-C and she connected you after tapping out two longs and two shorts. I believe such calls were billed as operator-handled long-distance calls, at the same rate as for adjoining areas just outside of the local calling area. The system that had been in place before was administered by another phone company (NorthWesTel?). It used a home-made loop extender that was a big power transformer with the line to the CO hooked up to the filament winding, and with the line to the subscribers (a 12 party line, but no coded ringing) coming out the primary. We were beyond its range. Besides, it didn't work very well... We got a dial phone and 7 digits about 1974, when Baker Creek became part of the Bouchie Lake exchange (604-249). - laura halliday University of B.C. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 17 Jan 1989 15:29-EST From: Ralph.Hyre@IUS3.IUS.CS.CMU.EDU To: telecom@bu-cs.bu.edu Subject: Bad pay-phone experiences while travelling [avoid these if you can, I suppose. I was travelling from Pittsburghgh to Boston when these things happened to me.] Bad experience #1: C{e,o}ntel, random operating company first rest area in NY on East 84: 950-1022 MCI access works, but the tone pad is dead after connection. I can't enter any numbers to call or access codes. theory: polarity is reversed after the call is completed, and the lousy phone doesn't have diodes to handle this. The nice operator connected me to the 'MCI operator', who took the information verbally and then connected me. I plan to fuss if I don't get billed at the '950' rate (50c surcharge) Bad experience #2 (worse) [don't remember the company, can anyone tell me who serves that area? They mostly use GTE pseudo-phones.] Somewhere on I-81 S (rest area between Scranton and Wilkes-Barre) try {,1,0}-950-1022, no luck. try 1-800-950-1022 and get the operator. I think I have a wrong number and hang up. I pick up the phone again and just dial 0, asking the operator to connect me to the MCI operator. She says (~) "No, I can only connect you to AT&T or Bell of PA". (I recall it being more like a refusal to speak with an ALDS carrier than anything else.) Not wanting to push the point at 5am, I give up and say OK, then call collect using AT&T (the AT&T operator was friendly, at least.) No answer, so next time I try MCI's 800-950-1022 number again, again get an operator, and say 'I was trying to call . She connects me and all proceeds normally, except for that hated $1 surcharge. Does anyone know of any other company that doesn't have a travel surcharge? I signed up with SBS Skyline originally, but then IBM sold them to MCI and they kept my $20 fee for this service and provided nothing. - Ralph ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 17 Jan 89 21:38:57 PST From: gast@CS.UCLA.EDU (David Gast) To: telecom@bu-cs.bu.edu Subject: Phone Rates One of the things that bothers me about the current pricing for phone service is that phone costs are becoming more constant 24 hours per day. It costs the phone company almost nothing to complete a phone call. Almost all of their costs are in fixed costs, mostly capacity costs for installing the equipment. Each individual call at the margine that is completed and billed for is almost pure profit. (It is business that wants all of the new services and equipment, the phone system of 10 years was technologically fine for transmitting voice). The heaviest demand for calls is Christmas and Mother's Day. Other than these special days, the heaviest demand for phone service is during the business day, which is why phone service has traditionally cost more during the day, than at night. Since the circuits are usually idle during the night (unless usage patterns have changed significantly during the past couple years), it would be most fair to charge almost nothing during those hours. The hours with the highest demand should have higher rates than now in order to encourage people to call at non- peak times. (The overall costs of phone service would decline if that were the case since less capacity would be needed to handle the same number of calls). In reality, however, costs are becoming more equalized, not less so. Services like 900 numbers cost the same no matter what the time of day they are called. The access charge is the same whether you call at peak or non-peak hours. (Business may refuse to pay that charge; residential customers cannot). Reach out America plans charge the same for calls during the evening and night periods. The last I checked there was no Reach Out America Night Plan, but there are discounts during the peak, daytime period available. AT&T's new tariff allows them to discount their telephone rates below their standard rates to business customers in order to be competitive, but they did ask to have the same ability to cut rates for residential customers. Finally, the night discount has been reduced as a percentage of the daytime rate. (The cost of completing a call at night has gone up because the decrease in the discount has not been offset by declines in the base rate. In fact, for many carriers, the base rate has been increasing, not decreasing). These changes have all helped the business customer (who deducts the cost of his phone service) and harmed the residential customer (who cannot). Thus, on an after-tax basis, the business customer calling during peak times may actually pay less for phone service than a residential customer who calls during hours with lower utilization of capacity. (I am assuming that the length and the location of the calls is the same). The reason given is that otherwise large businesses would set up their own telephone systems. The entire reason for the existence of the telephone monopoly in the first place, however, was that due to economy of scale, one large company could be much more efficient (and thus have lower prices) than smaller companies. To the extent that such economies of scale exist today, smaller companies should be unable to provide phone service cheaper than a large one. If there are no economies of scale, then we should expect to see more and more companies rather than the mergers of the past few years. And regardless, those companies would still have all of that unused capacity at night and on weekends, which they could sell very cheaply. It is easy to see who has more lobbying power. Businesses, who cannot vote, are more succesful than individuals who can. David Gast gast@cs.ucla.edu {uunet,ucbvax,rutgers}!{ucla-cs,cs.ucla.edu}!gast ------------------------------ To: uunet!comp-dcom-telecom@uunet.UU.NET From: srinivas@cs.utexas.edu (Srini Sankaran) Subject: Panasonic Switching System Date: 17 Jan 89 21:42:00 GMT I am considering buying a Panasonic KX-T616H Electronic Modular Switching System. If you have anything good or bad to say about this equipment, will you please e-mail me? Thanks in advance. -srini... srinivas@cs.utexas.edu ...!cs.utexas.edu!srinivas ------------------------------ To: comp-dcom-telecom@rutgers.edu From: chip@pedsga.UUCP (Chip Maurer) Subject: AT&T 1300 Answering system Date: 17 Jan 89 22:13:00 GMT We received an AT&T 1300 answering machine for Christmas. I am happy with the machine, but do not like how many rings it waits until it answers (about 6). If I had saved all receipts and boxes and stuff, and if it had been gotten at an AT&T phone store, I could have gotten an upgrade to one that adjusts the number of rings until it picks up. Anyway, is it possible through a chip or some other modification, to modify my machine to answer on fewer rings? I realize that my warrenty would be void, but if it is simple, I'd like to try it. -- Chip Maurer Concurrent Computer Corporation, Tinton Falls, NJ 07724 (201)758-7361 {masscomp|mtune|purdue|rutgers|princeton|encore}!petsd!pedsga!chip "It's one o'clock, and time for lunch. Bum de dum de dum dum dum" ------------------------------ To: munnari!comp-dcom-telecom@uunet.UU.NET From: munnari!stcns3.stc.oz.au!dave@uunet.UU.NET (Dave Horsfall) Subject: Re: Will my Sony IT-a600 work in Oz? Date: 18 Jan 89 00:45:40 GMT In article , henry@GARP.MIT.EDU (Henry Mensch) writes: | | i have reason to believe i may spend some time down under soon, | and i'd (naturally) like to take my favorite phone/dialer/ansaphone. | of course, i have no clue as to whether or not it is legal to | connect devices to the australian phone network, and (if so), | whether us-type phones will work. Unless it's Telecom-approved, it's not legal. But be that as it may, there are a few differences you should be aware of: 1) Mains power is 240-250V, 50Hz. 2) Most of Oz is still pulse-dial, with tone-dial slowly being introduced. 3) Pulse-dial timing is, ummm... 0.6 secs break, 0.3 secs make, with extended pause (dunno how long) between digits. (Since the PABX's I've used have always been tone-dial, and our local home exchange is now tone dial, I've forgotten all about the pulse stuff.) 4) The connector is a big 3-prong monstrosity, but RJ-11 adaptors exist. 5) Call-progress indicators are different - the RING tone is a double burr-burr, for example. 6) You won't find anywhere near the number of features provided by our favourite monopoly that you may be used to. It's a real POTS, but the new AXE digital exchanges offer a few primitive features, like call-waiting, abbreviated dialling etc. However, these are optional, and a particular account selects the required features (and pays). 7) There could be others - the risk is yours. -- Dave Horsfall (VK2KFU), Alcatel-STC Australia, dave@stcns3.stc.oz dave%stcns3.stc.oz.AU@uunet.UU.NET, ...munnari!stcns3.stc.oz.AU!dave PCs haven't changed computing history - merely repeated it ------------------------------ To: telecom@bu-cs.bu.edu Subject: Re: New way to donate money Date: Tue, 17 Jan 89 22:41:10 PST From: dgc@math.ucla.edu Will Martin called attention to the enormous potential for abuse of donations by telephone. The moderator dimisses this problem with the statement: I think the answer to this is that most telcos allow blocking of 900/976 numbers, to prevent abuse of any kind, which would presumably include the abuse described by Mr. Martin. I suspect also that there would be some cancellation clause in the telco's contract with the charity, which gives the telco total recourse for uncollectibles. This cries out for a reply! 1. In fact, over their strong opposition, telcos were ORDERED to allow blocking of 976 numbers by the State PUC's (and, at least, in California, out-of-state 976 numbers cannot be blocked). Initially, the telcos charged for the blocking! Now the FCC is going to permit 900 numbers with similar charging privileges to come on line and there is no plan to allow blocking them. 2. Any sort of cancellation clause will be nothing but a major problem for the subscriber. 3. There are services dedicated to providing charging and billing services, both electronically and physically (e.g., Visa, MasterCard, American Express, etc.). Numerous abuses by these companies have caused Congress to pass rigid laws regulating them. These companies already permit donating to charities by telephone calls. Next time there's a telethon, call one of the 800 numbers and you will be asked for a credit card number to charge your donation to. 4. The key point is that as long as telephone service is an essential public utility, without competition (and this is the case for local service) the telcos' regulated services should be separated from inessential other services. If they desire to provide charging and/or billing services, these should be provided separately, subject to the usual regulations that govern such services, with the same power of enforcement of payment (civil suit), AND NO MORE. In particular, in no way should failure to pay for these other services be allowed to interfere with telephone service. dgc David G. Cantor Department of Mathematics University of California at Los Angeles Internet: dgc@math.ucla.edu UUCP: ...!{randvax, sdcrdcf, ucbvax}!ucla-cs!dgc [Moderator's Note: A quick comment on a couple points Mr. Cantor raises: He says the telcos were *forced* by the PUC's to allow blocking. Maybe his telco was: Illinois Bell voluntarily implemented 900/976 blocking. They did it after consultation with the Illinois Commerce Commission, but there was no strong arm tactics involved; nor did they do it when it was apparent the Commission would force the issue. Mr. Cantor incorrectly notes that interstate 976 calls cannot be blocked. MCI has always blocked them. Calls to AC-976-anything via MCI return an intercept message saying 'at the present time, MCI does not complete calls to 976...' It is true that AT&T does not block the calls; however it is also true the charges billed to *intrastate* callers do not apply. 415-976-4297 costs 13 cents per minute at night via Reach Out. Callers within California pay $2 for three minutes. By 'telco having total recourse on collectibles' I was saying that when telco cannot collect from a customer, a chargeback is made to the IP. Mr. Cantor says the problems for phone subscribers would be horrible. What is so hard about calling your service rep and saying you refuse to pay for something? Patrick Townson] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest *********************