KLUB@maristb.bitnet (KLUB000) (03/28/91)
A couple weeks ago a business student from Sopron, a city in western
Hungary, managed to reach my answering machine at work and speak with
my father at home. Zoltan is learning English because he wants to
study at an American university and can therefore communicate with the
household. (Lucky for him, most of my friends from overseas speak
German or talk like Boris Badenov from the Rocky and Bullwinkle
cartoon series :-} ) My father reported that Zoltan's voice came over
the telephone quite clearly ("he sounded like he was only a few feet
away.") I confirmed the clarity of his voice myself listening to him
on the answering machine at work.
Telephone connections from Hungary into the United States are made by
AT&T, a fact I discovered through personal experience in Budapest. A
special prefix is dialed that tells the Hungarian telephone system
that the caller wants place a call to the US and the Hungarian PTT
switches the line to AT&T. No human intervention is involved, it's
all automatic.
I called Zoltan back since he had already tried me twice and God only
knows how much it costs to call America from Sopron (read expensive).
MCI is the long-distance carrier for our telephone at home. This
time, we had difficulty hearing each other over the telephone line.
Several times he and I had to repeat sentences to make each other
understood. Zoltan actually asked how when he called the USA the line
was so crisp and clear and now when I called back I sounded so faint
and with so much static. It appears I may have to score one for AT&T
for long-distance calls to Eastern Europe.
BTW I just saw the telephone bill for the call; it was less than $10.95
for 11 minutes to Hungary, or less than $1.00 a minute. As an
experiment I may try calling Kosice, Czechoslovakia later this week.
Richard Budd | E-Mail: IBMers - rcbudd@rhqvm19.ibm
VM Systems Programmer | All Others- klub@maristb.bitnet
IBM - Sterling Forest, NY | Phone: (914) 578-3746