delton@pro-carolina.cts.com (Don Elton) (08/11/89)
I hadn't heard of the idea before so I called up AT&T to find out what the
costs would be in setting up a 900 access BBS system. 900 access for those of
you in the hills is sorta like 800 toll-free service except that the caller
gets billed, normally in minute increments and the larger portion of the bill
goes to the recipient. TV is full of ads for silly dating services and talk
to the rapper services on these lines and you'd have to figure they wouldn't
be advertising this much if there wasn't money to be made on them. Here are
the rates to have a 900 number:
$1200 installation fee (flip a couple of switches I imagine)
$1000 per month
$0.30 per minute collection fee
You get to charge up to $2 per minute for the first minute and $1 per minute
for subsequent minutes. This would mean it would take several hundred minutes
per month to pay the monthly costs of the service and anything beyond that
would be profit I guess.
Would anybody call such a BBS (would have to be single-line I suppose)? What
would such a BBS have to offer to get people interested in paying by the
minute like this billed on your phone bill? Note that the feeds to the user
are set by the owner and could of course be less than the $2/$1 per minute
stated depending on the value of the service provided and the demand for that
service.
This could be an interesting angle for someone with time to pursue it.
Comments?
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US Mail: 3207 Berkeley Forest Drive, Columbia, SC 29209-4111mcgurrin@MITRE.MITRE.ORG (08/12/89)
Sorry, but I think it would be a bust. The kicker is the $0.30 per minute collection fee from the phone company. In order to break even you have to recover that, in addition to the flat monthly fee and the startup cost. Unless you want to lose money on every call, and make it up on volume :-), you need to charge more than $0.30 per minute, or $18.00 per hour. It's hard to think of what you would offer that would compete with services like GENIE or Compuserve, or the Telenet-type inexpensive access to remote BBS's. This isn't to say that there wouldn't be some novelty application that a creative person could come up with. You'd need something that would appeal to folks with modems, and that was better or as good sent as data as a voice 900 call. Who'd have thought listening to anonymous confessions would rake in the dough? This concept has just spread to the D.C. area.
delton@pro-carolina.cts.com (System Administrator) (08/12/89)
Network Comment: to #4687 by obsolete!mcgurrin%mwunix.mitre.org
Yeah I'd think it would be a bust too but like they say, a sucker is born
every minute and given the proliferation of the 900 services there must be
plenty of suckers out there. I guess the question is whether the suckers are
the callers or the callees.
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Pro-Carolina: 803-776-3936 (300-2400 baud, login as 'register')
US Mail: 3207 Berkeley Forest Drive, Columbia, SC 29209-4111SEWALL@UCONNVM.BITNET (Murph Sewall) (08/13/89)
>be advertising this much if there wasn't money to be made on them. Here are >the rates to have a 900 number: > >$1200 installation fee (flip a couple of switches I imagine) >$1000 per month >$0.30 per minute collection fee > >You get to charge up to $2 per minute for the first minute and $1 per minute >for subsequent minutes. This would mean it would take several hundred minutes >per month to pay the monthly costs of the service and anything beyond that >would be profit I guess. That IS the general idea. At the moment most of the profit is being made by 976 (heavy breathing) numbers. >Would anybody call such a BBS (would have to be single-line I suppose)? I've never thought ANY 900 service worthy of the "rational economic man," but P.T.Barnum was right -- there's probably a 'sucker' out there to call a 900-BBS every minute (at least until the first month's bill arrives). Seriously, 'portal' charges only $10 a month for basic service (mail but no permanent storage) and PC Pursuit during 'off-peak' hours is $25 a month. So, for $35 a month it's possible to have access to all 3 Mbytes a day of USENET messages and software plus email to the World (in addition to the as yet unpublicized but useable comserve.com gateway I documented here a couple of weeks ago, I've discovered a similar mcimail.com which also is open -- free from here to there but with standard MCI Mail charges from there to here). Using a 900-BBS to any degree apparently would cost a great deal more than PC Pursuit to 'portal.' Isn't 'pro-carolina' accessible by PC Pursuit anyway? Murph Sewall Vaporware? ---> [Gary Larson returns 1/1/90] Prof. of Marketing Sewall@UConnVM.BITNET Business School sewall%uconnvm.bitnet@cunyvm.cuny.edu [INTERNET] U of Connecticut {psuvax1 or mcvax }!UCONNVM.BITNET!SEWALL [UUCP] (203) 486-5246 [FAX] (203) 486-2489 [PHONE] 41 49N 72 15W [ICBM] The opposite of artificial intelligence is genuine stupidity! -+- I don't speak for my employer, though I frequently wish that I could (subject to change without notice; void where prohibited)
jasona@pro-europa.cts.com (Jason Asbahr) (08/15/89)
Comment to message from: mcgurrin@mwunix.mitre.org (Unknown User) mcgurrin@mwunix.mitre.org (Unknown User) writes: > Who'd have thought listening to anonymous confessions > would rake in the dough? This concept has just spread to the D.C. area. Do you mean confessing to someone, anonymously, or listening to someone else's confession? What do they do - hire "sinners"? Bug confession booths? Sounds like the Listener service as described in the book _Shockwave Rider_. (That's also where computer "worms" came from...) -Jason -=- UUCP: {nosc, uunet!cacilj, sdcsvax, hplabs!hp-sdd, sun.com} ...!crash!pnet01!pro-nsfmat!pro-europa!jasona ARPA: crash!pnet01!pro-nsfmat!pro-europa!jasona@nosc.mil INET: jasona@pro-europa.cts.com - BITNET: pro-europa.uucp!jasona@psuvax1 "...for whom the Bell tolls..."