peter@taronga.hackercorp.com (Peter da Silva) (02/24/91)
Today I was in Fulshear, a little town to the west of Houston, Texas. I had stopped to get some really good Barbecue. My wife mentioned that a friend lived in Brookshire another little town a few miles away, so we decided I should call them and see if they'd like us to come over. The phone was a SWB phone, but I read the info card anyway, and sure enough there was a little line "Long distance service provided by ITI". What the hell, it's only a couple of miles. I dialed directory assistance %, got the number (it was barely audible) and then dialed Brookshire. "Please insert one dollar and tewnty five cents for the first minute". Blow that for a joke. I called on my Sprint card. We shall see what happens when the bill comes. Moral: just because the phone is a "Bell" phone doesn't mean it's not a no-armed bandit. % Directory assistance gave me an old number, so it took two calls to get to the other end. I guess ITI (whoever they are) doesn't get updates. peter@taronga.uucp.ferranti.com [Moderator's Note: We covered this topic a few months ago here. John Higdon had maintained that the coin phone business was still in the hands of AT&T. I noted that in Chicago the 'genuine' IBT payphone cards all had a space to indicate which carrier handled the long distance traffic. The consensus was that AT&T handled the coin traffic by default, and the zero plus stuff went partly to AT&T and the rest to various carriers as per the notice on each phone. From what you are saying, it looks like Texas / SBT is doing the same thing. PAT]