TELECOM Digest Sat, 15 Jan 94 08:54:00 CST Volume 14 : Issue 32
Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson
Re: Unmetered Local Service (Jack Decker)
Re: Unmetered Local Service (David J. Greenberger)
Re: How to Phone US 0800 Numbers From the UK? (John R. Grout)
Re: User Interface From Hell (Martin McCormick)
Re: Rate of Change (Stewart Fist)
Re: Methods to Prevent Stalking and Phone Harrassment (Michael D. Sullivan)
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From:
[email protected] (Jack Decker)
Subject: Re: Unmetered Local Service
Date: 14 Jan 1994 23:00:23 GMT
Organization: Youngstown State/Youngstown Free-Net
Reply-To:
[email protected] (Jack Decker)
On Wed Jan 12 08:35:33 1994,
[email protected] (Lars Poulsen)
wrote:
> A. Padgett Peterson (
[email protected]) wrote:
>>> everywhere I go I see regional carriers attempting to eliminate
>>> "flat" and "unmetered" plans. As telecommuting and information
>>> highway access begins to take hold, the elimination of unmetered
>>> local service is the biggest threat to individual connectivity that I
>>> can imagine.
> About two years ago, I asked telecom readers for information about
> local rates, because I had the same fear. My results indicated that
> flat-rate local calling is readily available everywhere.
Depends on what you mean by "flat-rate". If you mean that local calls
are untimed, then you are probably correct. If, however, you mean
that there is no charge for individual local calls, that is not the
case in many areas. Ameritech in particular has tried to do away with
no-charge local calls; they've been successful in Wisconsin and (I
think) parts of Illinois.
I think when we talk about this issue, there are a couple things to
keep in mind:
1) Telephone CUSTOMERS do not want to be charged on a per-call or
per-minute basis. This was actually put to a vote of the people in at
least two states (Maine and Oregon, back in 1986 I believe), and in
those states the people voted to ban mandatory measured service by a
considerable margin. This was the case even though under the phone
company proposal pending at the time, there would have been a cap on
the maximum amount that could be charged for local calls (something
like $19 as I recall). In at least those two states, there will be
true flat rate service for the forseeable future.
2) If you consider the components of local telephone service, charging
on a per call or per-minute basis generally doesn't make sense (except
as an artificial means of raising revenue). The two major components
involved in the provision of local telephone service are outside plant
(the wires, cables, and terminal blocks and similar equipment that
carry service to your home) and the central office switch.
The costs for outside plant are totally unrelated to usage except in
very rare circumstances. The wires and cables do not "wear out"
faster through use. Most of the costs of maintaining outside plant is
associated with replacement of aging facilities, repairing damaged
equipment and cables, and upgrading equipment to keep up with growing
populations. None of these occur with any greater frequency because a
line is used more. From the standpoint of outside plant, whether a
line is in use zero hours a day, 24 hours a day, or somewhere in
between makes no difference whatsoever.
In regard to central office equipment, the only time increased usage
becomes a factor is when it is so high that extra call handling
capacity must be added to the switch. Normally, telephone switches
are designed to handle the maximum number of calls placed during peak
calling periods and then some. Most residential customers do not
place the majority of their calls during peak calling periods (that
is, during the business day). For all practical purposes, once the
central office switch has been installed, there are no additional
costs to the phone company whether subscribers use their phones a lot
or a little.
Of course, there is the argument that the phone company can get by
with installing a switch with lower capacity in the first place, if it
can discourage phone usage. In my opinion, this sort of backward
thinking is a disservice to customers. I can't imagine that in the
grand scheme of things it costs the telco that much more to provide
plenty of capacity right from the start, and it's a one-time cost that
can be amortized over the life of the switch (which is at least ten to
fifteen years, even with today's fast-changing technology).
If anything, today's technology should make it possible to charge less
for calls, especially local calls. For example, most interoffice
trunking is now on fiber optic cables which provide far greater call
capacity at less cost the the former system of interoffice copper
cables.
> In article <
[email protected]>
[email protected] (Dave
> O'Shea) writes:
>> though I wouldn't be terribly surprised to see some alternative
>> local loop providers selling a "flat-rate"-type service to people who
>> are priced out of the market by the LEC's.
> I rather doubt it; residential flat rate local calling is justified as
> a giveaway of excess capacity that must be there in order to serve the
> business community during "prime time". Alternate providers would tend
> to establish rate structures that discourage residential customers so
> that they don't have to build local plant to serve the low-volume
> customers.
There are a couple of reasons why I tend to think that may not happen.
First, telcos are still regulated by state PUC's, and in at least some
states alternative carriers will be required to serve all comers. For
another thing, in some areas the current LEC's will be required to
unbundle their local service offerings, charging separately for the
use of outside plant (which will almost certainly be on an unmeasured
basis) and for provision of dial tone from their switch. Alternate
service providers in those states will be allowed to lease circuits
(between the C.O. and the customer's premises) from telco on a
month-to-month basis, and connect those to their own switches. In
such areas there will be no disincintive to serve residential
customers, since they won't have to build any outside plant. And it
may well be that such alternate providers will choose to offer true
flat-rate calling, at least between customers of their switch. Even
in areas where the option to rent circuits from the telco doesn't
exist, they may be able to get to residential customers via cable TV
lines, small-cell wireless technology, or some other method that is
usage insensitive.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the heaviest users of
residential phone service (other than teenagers) are personal computer
users with modems. However, new technologies may be developed that
effectively takes most of that traffic off of the phone wires. For
example, there's no reason that full Usenet news feeds couldn't be
transmitted direct to the home via small satellite dishes (or via a
channel on the local cable TV system) ... the user would simply need a
computer (or other "box") with enough intelligence to selectively
retain only those newsgroups and articles of interest. Under such a
system, the user would only need to make a call in order to transmit
or recieve e-mail, or to upload Usenet news articles. I believe there
is something similar to this available already, but it is priced out
of reach of the home user (it's economical in some cases for those who
want a full Usenet feed, however). But this cost could well drop as
demand for access to the Internet rises. And beyond that, data
communications are much more suitable for wireless technologies, since
data users can tolerate small delays during periods of extreme
congestion much more readily than voice users. So if telcos are
figuring that they can make big bucks off of modem users if only they
can charge for local calls, they might want to think further about
that, since new technology could obsolete that particular use of the
phone lines rather quickly if the need arises.
>> One of the big reasons that long distance rates seem to "bottom out"
>> somewhere in the 10 cents/minute rate, even for the most humongous
>> customers is that the LD carriers have to pay most of that to the LEC
>> for the local loop. Perhaps as the RBOCs are able to recoup something
>> for those millions of unbillable hours of local connect time, this
>> will ease up.
> There is no inherent reason that a telco under rate cap (de)regulation
> will lower the access charges charged to IXCs just because they obtain
> a new revenue stream somewhere else.
> On the other hand, a rational rate structure would charge the IXC
> exactly the same as a local customer for what is essentially a local
> call at each end of the long-distance call.
A rational rate structure would charge all customers something
remotely related to the actual costs associated with providing a
particular service. Under a truly rational rate structure, your basic
monthly bill would be much higher (as much as double what it is now,
maybe even a bit more), but you'd have essentially free local calling
within your home LATA (and maybe even adjacent LATA's), and very low
cost calling to the rest of the country. Custom calling services
would be provided free, or at very low cost (just enough to amortize
any additional software costs required to provide those features).
The problem with this is that most customers, especially residential
customers (and especially senior citizens) would squawk like stuck
pigs if their monthly phone rates doubled or tripled, even if you gave
them free long distance calling to anywhere in the country.
Actually, if local service were to be pretty much deregulated (and
full competition allowed), I could conceivably see a day where you
might pay, say, $35 - $40 per month and get free, unlimited local
calling anywhere in your LATA. You'd then pay maybe about the same
amount to a long distance company to get unlimited calling anywhere in
the country (or at least within the continental U.S.). If you didn't
have that much usage in a month, you'd have the option to be on a
measured plan instead. I do not think this will happen until and
unless there are some substantial changes in the current regulatory
framework. Actually, about the only regulations that I would like to
see (which we do NOT have now) would be ones that would prevent telcos
from "bundling" service in such a way that you can only get circuits
from them if you also get dial tone from them.
>> If an employee is worth telecommuting, even a $4/hour connection
>> charge is fairly minor in the face of, say, a $65,000 salary/benefits
>> package. Even if you get charged that for eight hours a day, it's minor.
>> Most employees who would best benefit from telecommuting are the ones
>> who are well into long-distance calling areas.
> Many telecommuters will have a local call to an internet carrier's
> local Point Of Presence. Eight hours at $4/hour is $32 a day. This is
> at least the equivalent of another hour's salary. Hardly negligible.
I agree with this last point completely. I don't claim to be psychic,
but I will predict that telecommuting will NEVER take off where there
are per-minute charges involved. By that I mean it will never get to
the point where anyone other than the top executives and maybe a very
few other employees will be allowed to work outside the home. No
company in their right mind would pay $32 a day for an employee to
telecommute when that same employee could drive to work on under $5
worth of gas, and be physically present when needed. And keep in mind
that it wouldn't be just the $4/hour in the example mentioned, there's
also extra monthly charges for the extra phone lines required, plus
equipment costs at both ends. It all adds up.
>>> only advantage that I can see for the consumer would be that with
>>> metered service, the subscriber would have a right to a call detail
>>> listing the individual calls by called number, time, and duration.
> Hahahaha hahaha ha ha ... he ho hummmm ... Here in Denmark, local
> calls have been metered for many, many years -- by the pulse method.
> Itemized billing is NOT available, and there would be an uproar from
> office workers -- on privacy grounds -- if the telco were to start
> itemizing bills. Itemized billing, like flat rate local calling -- is a
> feature of the American telephone system; it has ended up that way
> mostly by accident. Certainly there is no logic that says subscribers
> have the right to an itemized bill. (There may, however, in many
> jurisdictions be a PUC regulation saying so.)
I am sorry to hear that. Unfortunately, I do not trust telco to do
correct billing without having some way to check up on them. What do
you folks do in Denmark when you get a bill that says you've used
100,000 units (meter pulses?) of service and you think it should be
more like 1,000? Do you pay without protest? Do you refuse to pay and
let telco disconnect your service for non-payment? Do you just assume
that your telco so perfect that they never make mistakes? Or do you
just figure that getting overbilled is part of the cost of having a
phone? I'm sorry, but I don't like any of those options.
Jack
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The thing Jack Decker and other pro-
ponents of flat rate billing seem to forget or ignore is that in most
instances of measured billing, the majority of telephone subscribers
actually pay LESS for service than with flat rate. A small minority
of the users -- mainly people with telephone intensive lifestyles such
as modem users -- pay more. Where flat rate service exists, the rate
is invariably evened out in such a way that telco still makes money
based on average usage which tends to run high on the curve due to
modem (and similar heavy volume) users. In other words, if you want
to average it out and set a 'flat rate', telco still won't be the
loser, but the majority of the users will be. He mentions two areas
where people voted against measured service but exactly the opposite
was the case in Chicago in the middle 1980's when IBT dropped its
'metro calling plans' in favor of pay-as-you-use it. Yes, the modem
users screamed bloody murder, but all sorts of telephone users other-
wise were happy to see their bill go down a couple dollars monthly.
One of the major consumer organizations here endorsed the new plan
without reservations. Flat rate calling plans work much the same way
as insurance actuarial tables: let a few people in a given category
cause some major expenses and everyone pays. I can't say that I
benefitted from measured service here (in fact I wound up paying more
than before by quite a bit) but it is a lot fairer to the 99 percent
of the public who does not use modems or stay on a phone connection
for hours at a time each day. PAT]
------------------------------
From:
[email protected] (David J. Greenberger)
Subject: Re: Unmetered Local Service
Reply-To:
[email protected]
Organization: Young Israel of Cornell
Date: 14 Jan 94 23:30:38 GMT
[email protected] (Lars Poulsen) writes:
> About two years ago, I asked telecom readers for information about
> local rates, because I had the same fear. My results indicated that
> flat-rate local calling is readily available everywhere.
Not quite, if by flat-rate you mean no charge for local calls (as
opposed to untimed service, carrying a per-call charge). As far as I
know, it is not an option in New York City, although it is an option
in other parts of New York State (such as Ithaca).
David J. Greenberger (607) 256-2171
[email protected]
------------------------------
From:
[email protected] (John R. Grout)
Subject: Re: How to Phone US 0800 Numbers From the UK?
Reply-To:
[email protected]
Organization: UIUC Center for Supercomputing Research and Development
Date: Fri, 14 Jan 94 21:44:25 GMT
In <
[email protected]>
[email protected] (A Alan Toscano)
writes:
> In article <
[email protected]> MAARUF ALI, <
[email protected].
> kcl.ac.uk> writes:
>> Could someone please tell me how to phone US 0800 numbers from the UK?
> Several previous replies suggested AT&T's USA Direct Service, but
> stated that the service could only be used to call AT&T-serviced "800"
> numbers. THERE IS NO LONGER ANY SUCH REQUIREMENT.
> 2. You must be calling an "800" number which does not have a
> geographic restriction against calls from the "gateway city" (in the
> USA) which serves USA Direct traffic from the country you're calling
> from. (This is unlikely, but possible. Most USA "800" numbers have no
> such restriction.)
Many nationwide USA "800" numbers used to have blackout areas in their
service to avoid paying for calls from callers who were near _their_
gateway city (from which they were providing _their_ service) ...
since current toll-switch technology can reroute such calls to cheaper
incoming lines, this is probably not too common anymore ... and, one
could assume that if a USA company (foolishly) listed a USA "800"
number as the _only_ way to reach them, it would be reasonable to
assume that it would be nationwide with no blackout areas ... so it
would be reasonble to assume that one could reach them via USA Direct.
However, nationwide USA "800" numbers may be sent to different places
in different parts of the country (e.g., my insurance company's
nationwide 800 number is sent to the nearest office) ... and many USA
"800" numbers _do_ have geographic restrictions (e.g., a specific area
code, a specific state, a specific group of states), and are
unassigned (or even reassigned) in other parts of the USA.
Several questions:
1. How would 800 Directory Assistance (which, for the benefit of
readers outside North America, is 800-555-1212), handle calls coming
through USA Direct? I can imagine an AT&T operator asking such a
person "what area code are you calling from?", as they often do here,
and the conversation taking a turn for the worse.
2. If a USA Direct caller thought they could reach the same office of
a company multiple times through their USA "800" number, would they
have any guarantee that each call would come through the same gateway
city each time (so it would be routed to the same office each time)?
At least, the post implies that there were different gateways when
calling from different countries.
John R. Grout
[email protected]
Center for Supercomputing Research and Development
Coordinated Science Laboratory University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
------------------------------
From:
[email protected] (Martin McCormick)
Subject: Re: User Interface From Hell
Organization: Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK
Date: Sat, 15 Jan 1994 00:39:17 GMT
The discussion of human engineering regarding
telecommunication systems reminds me of the beautifully-done report on
the history of Unix which was posted, recently. The report detailed
the development of Unix and the philosophy behind it. There was a
wonderful point made about the fact that each part of Unix is a small
block in the overall scheme of things and that nobody can predict how
these blocks will need to be arranged to do a certain job so they must
be designed according to certain standards of input, output, and
control in order to make them most useful.
Unfortunately, this idea is still pretty foreign to many
people who really should know better. We have a situation in which
the computer operating systems gaining the most popularity use a
graphical user interface instead of the command line or text-based
interface which was the standard user interface until recently.
The GUI or graphical user interface has been tauted as the
end-all and be-all to make computing accessible to the general public.
The problem is that the GUI makes access by blind people very
difficult. Actually, it wrecks any kind of nonstandard I/O because we
no longer have a situation in which input and output are separated
from the program. The beauty of Unix and, to a lesser degree, such
systems as CPM and DOS is that the original developers were smart
enough to know that they could never cover all possible applications
so they produced a set of great tools which allowed others to do like
Isac Newton and stand on the shoulders of giants.
GUI's are neither good nor bad in and of themselves, but they
are a serious barrier to blind computer users and anybody else who
needs to do things differently. Rather than choosing which interface
works best for us, the software companies have in their most finite
wisdom created a hideously complex operating system whose manuals are
thicker than many metropolitan telephone books and whose only hard and
fast rule is that the rules are constantly changing.
There are several companies working on interfaces to both the
Microsoft and Apple graphical operating systems, but users who have
shelled out hundreds of Dollars to buy these programs report that
access is still difficult and problematic.
The problem is that there isn't a large market for this sort
of special software and the amount of time and skill needed to develop
it means that somebody will need to be paid well for their time. I
have no complaint about that as much as I feel that the software
companies have created a bad problem in that it is not easy nor
trivial to get nonstandard forms of I/O. The ideal solution would be
for the operating system companies to design their interfaces with
vectors or hooks which could be easily used as the input to special
software which could treat the operating system as a black box and
concentrate on providing whatever output or control is necessary for
the user to manage the system.
Finally, while I don't know what will happen in the future, I
can almost promise what won't happen. The companies who produce the
spread- sheets, word processors, etc that we use will not, nor should
they be expected to, produce programs for blind users or other people
who need nonstandard access. If something isn't done to solve this
problem in a meaningful way, the information age will be only a dream
for some.
Martin McCormick WB5AGZ Stillwater, OK
O.S.U. Computer Center Data Communications Group
------------------------------
Date: 14 Jan 94 21:09:51 EST
From: Stewart Fist <
[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Rate of Change
Quite frankly, I don't know whether Gordan Palameta is agreeing or
disagreeing with me -- which is a bit of a let-down when you're trying
to deflate a few overfed techno-egos! <g> But his contribution about
the ways we can now organise society better with computers is certainly
true -- it's just that this is evolutionary, not revolutionary.
What I was trying to say is that technological change is less
disruptive, and *less* revolutionary these days, than it has been for
most of the last hundred years -- while conventional wisdom
(especially in the computer and communications industries) tries to
make us believe that it is *more*. Technologists are not at the
centre of the universe -- we are just one of the parts.
Gordan Palameta writes:
> The point is, when we consider the impact of airplanes, automobiles,
> etc. from our perspective, we are really compressing eighty years of
> history. A fair comparison with computers would require a similar
> eighty-year perspective.
But we can take an 80 year perspective. Before Henry Ford came along,
motor cars and aircraft were toys for the technophiles and for the
expert mechanics. There were eighty years of technological
development, but only 20 years of social impact.
It has been the same over the last eighty years with computers --
right from the days of Babbage and Pascal, if you want to stretch the
word 'computer' that far. My estimate of 20 years really only covers
the period when computers began to make an impact on the community,
not when they were custom-made devices used for vote-counting, or
calculating ballistics, or performing military decryption.
The technophile sees the development of planes extending back to
Kittyhawk, while the community sees aircraft-development only going
back to the days of the Ford Triplane and ending with the Jumbo Jet
nearly 30 years ago. What has happened to commercial aircraft since
then is largely trivia from the customer's viewpoint.
The jumbo jet flying today might be a much more sophisticated machine
than the first 727 Jumbo twenty-five years ago, but from the customer's
viewpoint, it is inferior if it doesn't have more leg room. The pilot
may notice an improvement, but the passengers don't.
This is just the point. In the area of computers and communications
the technological complexity and ingeniuty being exhibited by the
technologists, is not now being reflected in social impact -- or at
least, it's being reflected in changes with are relatively minor when
compared to those of the first decade or so of commercial PC
production. PCs will soon be telephone peripherals, about as exciting
as a modern-day telephone handset.
The linkage between social change and improvements in technology has
decline because we are moving from core effects, to the periphery.
This is always the way with technologies -- which is why we must be
careful with infinite extrapolations. The curve always flattens --
not because technological innovation lessens, but because it becomes
less relevant.
I was involved in making a television series on aircraft and airports
around the world in 1966, and we visited the Concorde factory in
France, then went on to Boeing in Seattle. The Boeing minders, at
that time, were keen that we should concentrate on the swing-wing SST
(SuperSonic Transport) -- which was the data superhighway of air-
transport at the time. But they hardly mentioned the first Jumbo
747 that was rolling off the assembly line, because it was too mundane.
So I totally agree with Gordan when he says:
> When considering the impact of technology, we tend to focus too much
> on things that are flashy and highly visible. A generation ago,
> people figured that by now we'd be zipping around in rocket ships and
> flying to work with our own personal jet packs. Few bothered to
> predict simple things like fax machines.
A good electronic mail system with national and international
backbones (like the Internet, but extended to the wider community so
everyone has access, as they do to the Postal Service) would be much
more socially useful and productive than videophones and videoconfer-
encing and fibre-to-the-home ... but where do we put our money?
And e-mail technologies needed have been around for years -- it is
just that e-mail is so cheap to implement, that it is impossible for
the telecos to make a profit. So e-mail backbone services need to be
public infrastructure, not commercial services run by telephone
companies. The commercial operators have a conflict-of-profits: each
one-cent e-mail message is one less 20-cent less phone or fax call.
If we leave it to free-market enterprise and we'll never get a good
service.
I agree with most of Michael Jacobs remarks, except for:
> Too often we forget that the history of our civilization is a
> history of technological progress.
Sure, technology is a major contributor -- but he is attempting to
place technology at the centre of the universe again -- and equating
"technology" with "progress". We are just one of the parts -- and a
lot of our technologies are useless, counter-productive, ridiculously
costly, or outright destructive.
------------------------------
From:
[email protected] (Michael D. Sullivan)
Subject: Re: Methods to Prevent Stalking and Phone Harrassment
Date: 15 Jan 1994 01:23:39 -0500
Organization: Express Access Online Communications, Greenbelt, MD USA
[email protected] (Nevin Liber) writes:
> A friend of mine (in Cook County, IL) is currently being stalked by a
> mutual acquiantance of ours. This has been going on for over a year.
> Unfortunately, the only evidence that my friend has is circumstantial
> (eg: the phone calls temporarily stopped when the suspect went on
> vacation, and resumed when the suspect returned back to IL).
> Much of what the suspect is doing is in the way of harassing phone
> calls, including calls from various payphones in the area where my
> friend lives, calls at all hours of the day and night, calling pagers
> and leaving my friend's phone number, etc.
Contact the local prosecutor (e.g., state's attorney). Many states
have a statute against harassment by wire. In New York, the crime is
"aggravated harassment." When I was a law clerk for the NY DA's
office many years ago, I worked on a case involving stalking in person
and by telephone (250+ calls a day) by a jilted lesbian lover and the
court entered an order prohibiting any attempt at telephone contact or
personal contact based on the aggravated harassment statute. A secretary
at my current law firm in DC was being stalked by an ex-husband, both
in person and by telephone (at the office, at one point over 100
calls/hour), and we helped her get a court order prohibiting any calls
or visits. When he continued, we got him thrown in jail.
Michael D. Sullivan
[email protected] [email protected]
Washington, D.C.
[email protected] [email protected]
------------------------------
End of TELECOM Digest V14 #32
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