Daniel.Zigmond@SPICE.CS.CMU.EDU (08/26/86)
Just for fun, I tried dialing 10xxx calls last night. I surprised to find that it worked, actually. I called 10xxx-1-nnn-nnn-nnnn and was immediately connected. Now, my question is: How will I be billed for this call? Will the company whose code is xxx actually send me a separate bill for the one call I made using their service? I'm anxious to find out. [Some of the charges will appear on your regular phone bill, as the RBOC's are in the business of bill-processing for 10XXX calls for some carriers. Naturally, they retain an effective means of enforcing payment where the ALDS folks don't: they can shut off your phone. -Elmo] By the way, here is a list (complete?) of companies available through 10xxx: xxx Company ------------------------------------------ 007 Telemarketing 054 Eastern Telephone 066 Lexitel 080 Amtel 084 LDS Metromedia 085 Westel 203 Cytel 211 RCI 220 Western Union 221 Telesaver 222 MCI 223 TDX Systems 235 Inteleplex 288 AT&T 333 US Telecom 366 American Telco 444 Allnet 464 Houston Network 488 ITT 777 GTE Sprint 800 Satelco 824 ATC/Directline 850 Tollkal 855 Network Plus 888 SBS Skyline The list comes from this month's 2600 magazine. I tried 220, 444, and 777 last night, so I can only be sure about those services. Not all of the companies serve the entire country (specifically, Telemarketing, Eastern Telephone, Telesaver, Inteleplex, Tollkal, and Network Plus do not). If there are some companies that provide 10xxx service that are not on the list, please let me know as I plan to check out all of these to see who has the lowest price/best service. Dan
sirbu@GAUSS.ECE.CMU.EDU (Marvin Sirbu) (09/01/86)
Regarding the failure to publicize 10xxx for long distance carrier selection. The last thing the long distance companies -- or the local operating companies for that matter -- want the public to do is start using 10xxx to select the lowest priced caller on a per call basis. This would lead to: 1) higher billing costs since users would now need multiple long distance bills each month rather than one. 2) The possibility of intensive price-based competition, which would lower profitability. 3) If users were really responsive to price changes, minor fluctuations in relative prices could lead to major shifts in carrier usage causing enormous capacity planning problems, both for the inter-exchange carrier and for the local exchange carrier with respect to access lines. In short, there are lots of reasons why no one is talking about 10xxx. Marvin Sirbu CMU