S.D-REUBEN%KLA.WESLYN%Wesleyan.BITNET@WISCVM.WISC.EDU.UUCP (05/09/86)
>Does anyone know of a (legal) way to force a local call to be routed >over long distance trunks? There are a few ways that I know of to route a local call over long distance trunks, and still do it legally, without seizing the trunks. One expensive was is to use Alliance Teleconferencing. To do this, dial 0-700-456-1000 (or 100x where X is from 1 to 4 for different Alliance centers. The -1000 is the nearest one, in the case of the 212 area code it would be Alliance in White Plains). After you are connected, you will be prompted by a series of messages on how to use it. Basically, you should ask for a conference size of 2, and then proceed to dial the (local) number that you wanted routed over a long distance trunk. If you want a really long connection, try 0-700-456-1001, which is Alliance in LA. By using Alliance, you are calling a "bridge", and then calling your office back after you reached the bridge. The Alliance rates are 25 cents per minute to call the bridge, plus the rates from the bridge (conference center) to the location(s) you are dialing. To NYC from White Plains it is about 14 cents during the daytime, so it would cost about 19 cents a minute to use Alliance. You can also get someone with Call Forwarding in an area a distance away to temporarily forward his calls back to you, thus also placing the call over long distance circuits. This is probably cheaper than Alliance (depending where this person who forwards the calls is), but I would think more difficult to set up for now and then for testing purposes. If you subscribe to an alternate service like Metrophone, Sprint, or any other service which lists their nationwide dialups, you can call one port in a long distance city, and then call yourself back FROM that city. (IE, if you use Sprint, call lets say the port in Fresno, and from Fresno call back to NY...This should be a real test of long distance connections over your modem since most of these long distance services have pitiful transcontinental connections...AT&T's Alliance, on the other hand, seems to always have the highest grade possible, even better than a normal AT&T call...Strange...). In any event, depending on your long distance service, this call may or may not be cheaper than Alliance or call forwarding, so check the LD co's rate sheet. If you need more details about how to try this out, please let me know...Hope this helped a bit... Doug Reuben Reuben@Weslyn.Bitnet