Home |
Search |
Today's Posts |
|
London Transport (uk.transport.london) Discussion of all forms of transport in London. |
|
LinkBack | Thread Tools | Display Modes |
#35
|
|||
|
|||
Telephone line numbers, prefixes, and area codes
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. |
Thread Tools | Search this Thread |
Display Modes | |
|
|