Linc Madison <linc@tongue1.berkeley.edu> (06/01/91)
As of about 45 minutes ago, calls between Berkeley and San Francisco "Central" (roughly the northeastern 1/3 of the city, including downtown, North Beach, Castro, and Mission areas) are local (Zone 1). I was musing on the question of what would have happened were I in the midst of a call at the time of the cutover. Suppose, for example, I called someone in S.F. at 11:50 and talked for 25 minutes. In exact compliance with the tariff, I should be charged 40% x ($0.08 + 9 x $0.02) = $0.10 for the first ten minutes, and nothing for the remaining 15 (unless I have measured service, in which case I would pay 40% x (15 x $0.01) = $0.06). Would my phone bill show the Zone 2 call as having a duration of 10 minutes, or 25? Would I have caused all the billing computers at Pac*Bell to explode, engulfing downtown San Francisco in a massive conflagration? Did they actually cut over at 4:00 this afternoon so as not to have to pay people overtime to figure these things out? Linc Madison = linc@tongue1.berkeley.edu PS. I now get to call Belvedere, Sausalito, and Walnut Creek, as well!! [Moderator's Note: Ah, Linc ... here's one for you to worry about: you are crossing the Pacific Ocean coming from Australia to California. You are using the phone, making a collect call to SFC. When you cross the international date line so it becomes the previous day once again, do they charge you for a call which lasted a <negative> number of minutes? After all, the call was finished before you even started it. Suppose on the (Australian) day you started the call, the telco was changing over to a new billing plan at the exact moment you were crossing the IDL ... would they charge the <negative> minutes using the old calculation or the new one? :) PAT]