KLUB@maristb.bitnet (Richard Budd) (11/28/90)
In TELECOM Digest 10/469, Donald E. Kimberlin <0004133373@mcimail. com> writes: > "`Since Polish payphone mechanisms were increased to > 20 zlotys several months ago, 20-zloty coins have gone into hiding. > "`The payphone-sized 20-zlotycoins are selling on the streets > for 200 to 1,000 zlotys apiece.'" (I still say cheap at a thousand > zlotys -- about a dime U.S., isn't it?) Wolf Paul <iiasa!cossun!wnp@relay.eu.net> writes: > A Polish colleague of mine informs me that payphones were recently > converted to use a special phone token, which presumably is available > at the official rate at various outlets. While visiting Krakow in September I discovered pay phones use two different types of tokens, one for local and the other for long distance The local token at the Hotel Cracovia was 500 Zloty (at the equivalent of a nickel, still a bargain). I do not know the price of long-distance tokens. For the telephones at the Hotel Cracovia, you purchased tokens at the front desk. Through a switching device in the telephone, you could not dial local with a long-distance token and vice versa. We tried and received no connection. No explanation, just dead air. This experience came courtesy of another traveller who had been telephoning the Soviet Consulate in Krakow. He was trying to obtain an entry visa to bicycle through the Baltic States, for which he had spent already a week in town (his adventures with the consulate's telecom system would be an article in itself). Telephone calls in Poland are an exercise in patience. He tried telephoning from the student hotel where we were staying and received wrong numbers on his first two tries even though he swore he dialed the correct numbers in both cases. The desk clerk explained to us that the telphone system is so bad that it is not unusual to reach the wrong person on a first try. The clerk tried dialing the consulate yet a third time and instead rung up a doctor's office. Don't even attempt trying to call North America unless you're patient. A teacher from London finally got a connection to the U.K. after four days of trying. While staying in Wroclaw (Breslau), there was a news item on TV that the city had installed the nation's first public telephones activitated through credit cards. I couldn't understand the fine details because it was in Polish. From what my host explained to me, the credit cards are issued by the telephone company and you insert them into a slot in the telephone and then dial the number. No word yet how successful people have been with their calls. Richard Budd Marist College Pughkeepsie, NY KLUB@MARISTB.BITNET
wnp@relay.eu.net (Wolf PAUL) (11/29/90)
In article <14999@accuvax.nwu.edu> KLUB@maristb.bitnet (Richard Budd) writes: >While staying in Wroclaw (Breslau), Poland, there was a news item on TV that >the city had installed the nation's first public telephones >activitated through credit cards. I couldn't understand the fine >details because it was in Polish. From what my host explained to me, >the credit cards are issued by the telephone company and you insert >them into a slot in the telephone and then dial the number. No word >yet how successful people have been with their calls. Actually these probably don't accept credit cards, but pre-paid phone cards such as are used in several West European countries as well. Austria, Belgium (I think) and the UK use phone cards where the information is stored magnetically; Germany uses phone cards with a tiny chip on them. Their main attraction is in countries with a low density of private phones, where most people use public phones most of the time. Credit cards would be impractical since there would not be a home phone account to charge them to. I also doubt that credit cards would find much public acceptance in the recently-liberated societies of Eastern Europe. You buy them in stores (different depending on country) and they come in denominations such as 100 units, or 200 units (Austria), or UKL 5 or 10 (UK), etc. The cards even from the same system, such as UK and Austria, are not compatible: it seems they do contain some coding difference, or else have a PTT identifier code readable by the equipment. Thus, a UK card will not work in Austria and vice versa. Of course the German Microchip cards don't work anywhere else either, nor would one expect them to. W.N.Paul, Int. Institute f. Applied Systems Analysis, A-2361 Laxenburg--Austria PHONE: +43-2236-71521-465 INTERNET: wnp%iiasa@relay.eu.net FAX: +43-2236-71313 UUCP: uunet!iiasa!wnp HOME: +43-2236-618514 BITNET: tuvie!iiasa!wnp@awiuni01.BITNET