hlee@hplabsb.UUCP (Ho John Lee) (10/12/84)
Does anyone have any recommendations for alternate long distance phone carriers? My roommate wants to get a subscription to SBS, which supposedly has reasonable coverage and channel quality. My only experience so far has been with MCI, which seemed to have a lot of hiss and fading. -- Ho John Lee, HP Labs UUCP: ...!hplabs!hlee ARPA: hlee.hplabs@csnet-relay
bazelman@wivax.UUCP (Rudy Bazelmans) (10/16/84)
> > Does anyone have any recommendations for alternate long distance > phone carriers? My roommate wants to get a subscription > to SBS, which supposedly has reasonable coverage and channel > quality. My only experience so far has been with MCI, which > seemed to have a lot of hiss and fading. > -- > Ho John Lee, HP Labs I have been using SPRINT for about a year now. I use SPINT rather than MCI because the ability to make calls from outside your local calling area is free whereas MCI charges $5/mo. I am often in NH, MA and NY and it is nice to use the service anywhere. It is also about 10-20% cheaper than AT&T. On the down side: The phone quality is all right, not great. I get billed for one minute calls that I never made. Apparently they (and several others including MCI) can't detect when the phone was actually answered and if you let it ring too long (>5?) they assume that it was answered. It is also a real pain to get credit for phone calls never made. I have also had numerous occasions where the local access number was either busy or it didn't answer. I have also gotten busy signals from the SPRINT trunks on the destination side. When I call customer service, they tell me to try again later. If I decide to use AT&T, they won't pay the difference. I recently heard from a reliable source at from AT&T that the reason that AT&T is so much higher in cost compared to the other long-distance carriers is because they are required to pay twice the access charges until equal access is in effect in the area. When equal access is in effect, I plan to return to good old AT&T; maybe sooner. -- Rudy Bazelmans - Wang Institute, (617) 967-2609 [apollo, bbncca, cadmus, decvax, harvard, linus, masscomp]!wivax!bazelmans