Official Random <birchall@pilot.njin.net> (06/01/91)
For a year and a half, I've dialed in to the local terminal
server of [state university which shall remain nameless.] Until last
December, access was facilitated via an X.25 statewide network, which
has since died due to budget cuts and cost overruns. Having discovered
four-digit phone bills (that's four to the left of the decimal), I am
taking the following action.
I live three NXXes from the dial-in. Diagram:
Dial-in ----- NXX ----- NXX ----- Me
Oddly, I am only local to the NXX nearest to me, but it is local to
the NXX beyond it _and_ the dial-in's NXX.
Having an aunt and uncle who live in the NXX which is local to
both me and the dial-in, I have gotten their permission to get telephone
service at their residence. For a cost of about $18.88 a month -
including taxes - I get unlimited local calling and call forwarding.
Of course, the call forwarding will be _permanently_ programmed to
forward to the dial-in.
The plot thickens: The dial-in has a rack of 18 modems in a
hunt group. Therefore, if I am on line and someone else calls my
forwarding number, it does NOT busy on them, but rather just drops
them to the next available line. My aunt and uncle will also
(according to the local BOC people I ordered this from) be able to
dial out, utterly unaffected by the whole forwarding scheme.
I stand to save about $400 _at least_ each month by doing this. My
friends from nearby exchanges will also get substantial savings.
Things like this make me begin to wonder why people phreak ... if you
ask me, the phone company is voluntarily losing money in this case,
and, worse yet, losing money it would be getting from the lucrative
DCOM gang.
Are they being nice?
Are they just confused? [No one I talked to could understand it.]
Is this illegal? [I know it's unethical, and I quit school before
Ethics 101.]
Will they eventually get really p-o'ed at me?
Should I have done this long ago?
Should we all do this?
Should I get Identi-Call service and Call Forwarding on the data line
here, thus creating a situation where calls to the auxiliary number
would ring, but calls to the main data number would forward through my
new port and onto Internet - thus providing absolutely free network
access for an entire county??
Just curious.
shag
[Moderator's Note: There are instances -- very few of them, and yours
is apparently one -- where two or more local calls chained together
wind up costing less than a single toll call when you include the cost
of the forwarded call AND the fixed expenses each month such as line
charges, the call-forwarding monthly fee, etc. Obviously, all links in
the chain have to have (relative to the one they connect with)
unlimited, untimed local calling to make it worthwhile. As soon as any
one link has to pay tolls, you may as well all pay tolls, since the
difference will be negligible or possibly even against your favor!
Now it may be that unlimited calling is available from you to your
aunt and from her to the site with *residence* service, but as you
will recall from a previous discussion here, as soon as you solicit
the public to call your telephone number, la-la! you have a BUSINESS
line, and BUSINESS rates. Do the BUSINESS telephones on the same
exchange as your aunt *also* get unlimited local calling? I'd be
surprised if they do. In Chicago, business phones are charged by the
minute even on very local calls. No unlimited, untimed service for
them! So maybe when you start inviting 'the entire county' along with
all your friends to use the line at their pleasure to avoid tolls,
particularly since the whole thing terminates in a business
subcriber's equipment (the modem lines at the site), telco might feel
you were soliciting the public to call your phone, i.e. the recent BBS
sysop fiasco and convert the forwarded line at your aunt's place to
business service. Then what? Back to paying tolls? If this works for
you, fine, but best keep it to yourself and use it -- not invite
everyone else to join in. PAT]"76012,300 Brad Hicks" <76012.300@compuserve.com> (06/03/91)
> Is this illegal? ... Will they eventually get really p-o'ed at me?
This exact question came up in the news less than a year ago, less
than a hundred miles from me. A guy in central Missouri figured out a
deal by which he could get lower intraLATA rates by hopscotching once,
and set himself up to do it. Then he got REALLY creative: he put some
kind of multiplexor on each end so that up to eight conversations
could ride the same circuit, and "sold" access to the other seven
pseudo-circuites, openly and publicly, to people in his part of the
state. The savings for them was something like 30% or 50% off of
standard intraLATA charges from SWBT.
When they finally caught on to this (the mills of bureaucracy grind
slowly), Southwestern Bell gave birth to a porcupine with all
attendant sound effects, and hit the guy with about a dozen lawyers.
If memory serves, the final settlement gave them the right to charge
him enough extra to make it uneconomical, but not the right to recover
damages.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Almost all of the above is from dim memory. To get an
accurate account, call the St. Louis Post-Disposal (excuse me,
Post-Dispatch) or the St. Louis Riverfront Slimes (excuse me, Times)
and ask them for a copy of their articles on the subject. (Front page
stuff in both papers.) It's late, and I don't have a phone book
handy; you can get both numbers from (314) 555-1212, of course. Or
maybe somebody here knows the full story?
[For direct replies, save me a lot of money and use
jbhicks@mcimail.com; CI$ is just easier for me to hit via the company
QuickMail system.]