uk.railway, uk.transport.london restored due to their interest in
telecommunications.

On Apr 10, 12:26 pm, Stephen Sprunk wrote:

I think message rate service was $2-$3 cheaper (in 1965 dollars).

So, anyone who made fewer than 29-43 calls (per month, I assume) saved
money with metered service. That's only about one call per day. I
didn't know _anyone_ when I was growing up that made so few calls--but
that's probably a direct result of our local calling being truly free.

It was more calls than that due to the allotment included with the
service. So, the difference was more like two-three calls per day.

As metnioned, a family with children would find metered service
costly--kids making calls, plus parents needing to call various
stores, other parents, school, etc.

On the other hand, older people with more settled lives wouldn't use
the phone as much. Don't forget this was an older generation who grew
up without phones (or costly phones) and not used to the idea of
social chats. Heck, in 1965 writing a letter was still cheaper than a
local call. Also, remember this was city life, where people would
easily walk to friends, neighbors, stores, etc. and transacted a lot
of business in person*. Things were more stable back then and
established routines (like store hours, product lines, etc) didn't
vary constantly like they do now. Two calls a day spread out over a
month was certainly adequate for many people (there would be days
where no calls were made, and days where several calls were made).
Indeed, even if there were events going on in one month where the cost-
benefit was exceeded, in other months it would not be.


*PhoneCo ads in that era encouraged both business and individuals to
do their business by phone.



There's a post in comp.telecom.dcom saying POTS lines will be required
for DSL.

How long ago and in what states? Some PUCs have kowtowed to the telcos,
but a growing number have sided with the public and mandated the
availability of "naked" DSL. Even where not mandated, many telcos have
started offering it anyway due to competitive pressure.

I don't think the PUCs have anything do with this as these services
are now deregulated.

FWIW, here is the thread:
http://groups.google.com/group/comp....261a67e7?tvc=2

As an aside, note that different areas of a state had different rates
and service plans. The Independent phone co's had their own rate
plans which may have been very different than Bell plans. The tarrifs
were ridiculously complicated.


Back when folks were setting up BBS's in their homes they expected to
get residential service but the phonecos wanted to give them a higher
cost business line. I don't know how this eventually played out. But
I felt the phoneco was correct in asking for a business rate because
these lines would be heavilly used.

If the BBS owner was not operating a "business", then why should they
have to pay "business" rates?

For telephone service purposes, a "business" has a broad definition,
and includes non-profits and informal organizations.


The telcos' mistake was in setting their tariffs by the character of the
customer rather than by usage level.

When the tariffs were established years ago usage levels were
difficult to measure. As mentioned, many places only offered flat
rate service, though business lines still cost more. Even if outgoing
calls were metered, they weren't necessarily timed, and incoming calls
were neither metered nor timed except under very special situations.
The kind of individual line traffic measurement/analysis done
routinely today were cumbersome and expensive to do in electro-
mechanical days. For instance, decades ago to get an idea of total
central office traffic, they looked at the ammeter from the main
battery or manually counted up the number of Strowger units in use.

With ESS, of course, they can and do generate detailed line usage
reports. Indeed, in the later 1970s Bell was a big purchaser of PDP/
DEC mini computers to hook up to switches to do such work. The "Bell
Labs Record" was filled with articles on new software.

Further, for lines with extremely heavy inward traffic, the phone
company established special arrangements so as to avoid blocking other
calls. A home BBS would not generate that kind of traffic (it was
more for call-in lines for radio stations), but the point is that
heavy traffic users paid more.

I also suspect if there was the least bit of static on the line the
BBS owner would be real quick to call up and demand an immediate
'cleanup', whereas a POTS subscriber might not even notice it or care
that much.

BBSes ran over POTS lines. And regular customers who used modems (to
call BBSes, work, etc.) would have the same complaints about poor call
quality.

A user of a BBS would be much less sensitive to a bad line than the
BBS operator. Further, the BBS operator was more likely to be
knowledgeable about line conditioning and able to demand specific
technical upgrades. Basically, the BBS operators found a loophole in
the tarrifs and exploited it. That didn't make it right. It meant
other phoneco customers were cross-subsidizing their operations.


Still, BBSes weren't really problems because most only had one or a
handful of lines. Later, though, ISPs would set up shop wherever they
could find cheap rent and then install hundreds to thousands of new
lines that were constantly in use--forcing the telco to buy and install
new equipment, assign new prefixes, etc. Large local calling areas
magnified this problem because potentially millions of customers could
be cost-effectively served from a single location, whereas areas with
metered service forced ISPs to spread their equipment around.

And the ISPs were vocal about getting cheap service, too.

After Divesture, it was irksome to see many knowledgeable subscribers
demanding the benefits of the prior regulated business but not willing
to pay the expenses of it. In pre-Divesture days the phoneco provided
various services for free or low cost since they had a monopoly and a
steady revenue stream, and also the PUC told them to do so. But after
Divesture, many PUC mandated services remained on the books and yet
the phonecos were competing with newcomers who had none of the old
service obligations and as such were able to provide cheaper service.
Also known as "skimming the cream". Deregulation has eliminated much
of that, but there are still some who demand certain pre-Divesture
services at modern day competitive prices, even if they don't even
have a Baby Bell account.