Ted Marshall <ted@blia.sharebase.com> (05/13/91)
Just to show that they aren't all bad, this weekend, I found a very
civil COCOT. If they were all like this one, COCOT wouldn't be a dirty
word. The machine is located in a chinese restaurant in Los Altos,
California (AC 415).
The following is from memory from the instruction card:
Local calls $.20 (same as Pac Bell), 15 minute limit.
Long distance carrier is MCI, for both coin and non-coin calls.
[I verified that a 0+ call gave an MCI bong.]
911 allowed and free. [I did not verify this.]
10XXX and 950-XXXX long distance calling allowed. [102880+ did give
an AT&T bong.]
Long distance rates:
IntraLATA $.10
InterLATA $.10
Out-of-state 20% surcharge
[This is how it is written on the instructions; I assume that the 10
cents is also a surcharge.]
The phone itself looks much like a standard Pac Bell payphone.
However, it does produce its own dial-tone and then generate its own
DTMF string on to the line (receiver not muted). On coin calls, the
money request is a synthesized voice generated by the phone (it come
on immediately after the last digit.)
I did not actually place any calls on it, but the little playing I did
seemed to confirm the printed information. An attempted coin call to
the Los Angeles area (818-886) requested $1.00 for 3 minutes, which
seems about right. 212-555-1212 requested $.70. Other than the
(comparatively small) LD surcharge, it might as well have been a RBOC
payphone.
One funny thing: the phone is operated by "Western # Bell" ("#" = a
white octothorpe (SP?) on a black rounded rectangle (looks like the
keypad key)). Compare this to "Pacific * Bell" (TM). I guess these
days, no one has a trademark on "<anything> Bell".
Ted Marshall ted@airplane.sharebase.com
ShareBase Corp., 14600 Winchester Blvd, Los Gatos, Ca 95030 (408)378-7000
The opinions expressed above are those of the poster and not his employer.